MACBOOK PRO 3 BEEPS REPEATING UPGRADE
MACBOOK PRO 3 BEEPS REPEATING FULL

I even dug out an old AHT disk and tried running it but it didn't work AHT loaded but it hung up on the system probe. I've googled and found others with similar problems but no definitive cause. Who knows how long it had been running like that? In fact today I put my MBP to sleep, closed the lid and left it plugged in (second monitor, USB hub with Time Machine hanging off it, Ethernet, power), went out for a bit, and came home a few hours later to the fans at lift-off speed and it locked up.

It makes me sad to have to shut down my laptop to take it anywhere. and also as a preliminary step to make sure that software wasn't causing this issue. When Mavericks came out I used that as an opportunity to do a complete wipe and clean install, since I'd done 3 previous upgrades-in-place and installed and uninstalled a lot of software.

MACBOOK PRO 3 BEEPS REPEATING UPGRADE

I've gotten the three beeps enough that I suspected the third party RAM upgrade I have in it (2x8GB Corsair sticks from Newegg, installed in August 2012), and the last time it happened I opened it up, dusted it out, cleaned the contacts with alcohol, and re-seated the RAM. In that case the screen stays on but it becomes completely unresponsive, no cursor movement, and it gave me the error code for a memory error (three repeating beeps over and over). Once or twice it's locked up while I was working and it wasn't plugged in. Eventually I notice my bag is buzzing or extremely warm, and I have to do a hard shutdown until I get somewhere to boot it up again (usually home). It most often happens when unplug it, put it to sleep (either by closing the lid or choosing  ->Sleep from the menubar), and put it in my laptop bag and go somewhere.

MACBOOK PRO 3 BEEPS REPEATING FULL

The symptom is this: sometimes, not all the time, when my Early 2011 MacBook Pro 15' goes to sleep, it will lock up and not respond to anything other than a hard reset, fans going full tilt, screen black, and overheating like crazy. Mainly I'm going to practice what I'm telling the Genius tomorrow.

My appointment is tomorrow morning but maybe there's some Arsians that can give me more information to talk to the Genius with, or more troubleshooting to try. I've been dealing with this for a while now but it's finally ticked me off enough to take it in to Apple.

Macbook pro 3 beeps repeating