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evoLver · Dec 21, 2009, 12:28 PM

Weird. My Macbook Pro 2.2 (10.6) just emitted a loud beep (like a pager sound on a telephone) upon startup and the "sleep" light was flashing quickly and then went to it's slower pulsation for a second or two.

I had pressed the start button for almost 2 seconds to start the machine i don't know why.

WTF?

imitchellg5 · Dec 21, 2009, 12:50 PM

Reset the SMC and clear PRAM.

evoLver · Dec 21, 2009, 01:32 PM

thank you!

my fan was acting weird last night, too. It must be the SMC.

I guess I will clear the PRAM as well. Shouldn't be any harm in that. I took snapshots of all my keyb/mouse settings in case I lose them.

reader50 · Dec 21, 2009, 02:23 PM

Also, check if Apple System Profiler reports all of your RAM. An extra beep on startup could mean one of your sticks failed the startup RAM test.

imitchellg5 · Dec 21, 2009, 04:55 PM

Normally if the RAM is bad, there will be three distinct beeps.

ibookuser2 · Dec 23, 2009, 03:58 AM

Holding the button on startup is a way of triggering a firmware update, if the right files are in the right places. The beep and the rapidly flashing light are the machine indicating that it's trying to perform a firmware update. Since you hadn't actually run a firmware update utility, there was no new image to flash and nothing actually happened. Nothing to worry about; just don't hold the power button on startup if you don't want your machine to do this.