iMac Making Intermittent Beeping Tone

[Plat-O]

Hi All,

First off a couple of apologies:

1. Sorry in advance for how vague this post is going to be - its a weird issue to describe.
2. Sorry not sure if it is software or hardware. I'm leaning towards software hence posting here.

Over the past week or so my iMac has intermittently started making 3 soft beeps. Beeps probably isn't the right description of the noise, its 3 evenly spaced tones, it kind of sounds like organ note? Its not loud, just kind of happens in the back ground. Sounds occur every ten minutes.

I've been checking the Console each time the noise occurs however nothing is appearing. I've also taken a look at the processes running in the Activity Monitor, however apart from the obvious big apps, who knows what most of the processes are.

Checking my downloads, the only recent downloads have been some PDF's from a government website. So I don't think anything untoward should have made its way onto the iMac.

The iMac doesn't appear to be having any performance issues in relation to the noise.

System Specs:
27 inch Mid 2010 iMac
OSX 10.8.2
Core i7 procs 2.93 ghz
8gb RAM

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

 

[DJLC]

That's an odd one...

To isolate whether it's hardware or software, you might try booting into the Recovery partition. You can repair your drive and permissions while you listen for the sound. You can get there holding "R" as the iMac boots up, or alternatively hold "Option" and select "Recovery" at the selection screen. Not sure if mid-2010 supports "R" at boot or not.

 

[Plat-O]

Thanks John I'll keep your suggestion in mind, its a good idea.

Since my first post I have been trying to do a process of elimination. I force quit all the applications I had open at the time. Since doing that the noise has stopped so it would appear it was app. I am gradually re-opening them one at a time to see if it starts up again with a certain app running.

 

[Plat-O]

Ok.... so found the issue. Little embarrassed

It is an alert tone on Outlook when the mailbox sync has errors. It must poll my web e-mail account every ten minutes hence regular timing of sound.

Please forget I ever asked this question

 

[ciro.baroni]

iMac Making Intermittent Beeping Tone

So, I have the same issue. did you solve??

 

[ciro.baroni]

iMac Making Intermittent Beeping Tone (THE SOLUTION)

So, after 3 chat with apple I had no results, I finally fix it !!
The sound comes from Skype, there is a option into Skype preferences called "play sound when contacts become on line" in preferencias -> Notifications.

Just disable this option and the problem has fix !