- Dec 30, 2009
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I have been helping a friend with his iMac. From what I could gather, I think it is a motherboard issue. I want to see if anyone else comes to a different conclusion from this evidence:
On startup, the Mac was very slow to post (or what I would consider the equivalent to a post). It took more than three minutes on a grey screen before I could boot from a CD/DVD.
I ran Memtest86 on the system and found several errors at a very low address. The system contains two 1GB sticks, so I removed one and ran the test. The same error occurred. My assumption at this point was that the stick I had removed was the good one. However, running the test with only the supposedly good stick returned the EXACT same error at the exact same address on the same test. The chance of both sticks having an error on the exact same bit is near impossible.
At that point, I checked each stick one at a time in the second slot, and the errors were still there. I've supposedly eliminated the possibility of the RAM and the individual slot from being the culprits. So I think it's the motherboard. Is there something else I should consider?
iMac 20" early 2006 model
On startup, the Mac was very slow to post (or what I would consider the equivalent to a post). It took more than three minutes on a grey screen before I could boot from a CD/DVD.
I ran Memtest86 on the system and found several errors at a very low address. The system contains two 1GB sticks, so I removed one and ran the test. The same error occurred. My assumption at this point was that the stick I had removed was the good one. However, running the test with only the supposedly good stick returned the EXACT same error at the exact same address on the same test. The chance of both sticks having an error on the exact same bit is near impossible.
At that point, I checked each stick one at a time in the second slot, and the errors were still there. I've supposedly eliminated the possibility of the RAM and the individual slot from being the culprits. So I think it's the motherboard. Is there something else I should consider?
iMac 20" early 2006 model
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