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2008 MacPro 3,1 continuous rebooting

B

birdieman128

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 13, 2016
59
21
I had been using my MacPro (unsupported) on 10.12.2 Sierra and the screen freezes yesterday, mouse and keyboard were not responsive also. So hold down power button and to shut it down.

Upon power on, the loading progress bar would be about half and then restart the computer again. Since I have El Capitan on another drive, before i was able to boot up this drive, but this time it will also load half way and restart again.

I have tried to use a USB flash drive but it only gone half way and restart.

I tried to safe boot by press and hold shift after the boot sound, but it will not go to safe boot at all and then it will load to half way and restart.

I tried to press and hold D, same result.

I have reset PRAM and SMC, same result.

I have successfully press command + s to go into single -user mode, fix disk and it said modified, reboot, same result as it would boot half way and restart again.

I am running out of idea.
 
birdieman128 said:
Those RAM were there for the past 5 years, nonetheless I changed back to the original RAM sticks, but same result, booting half way and then restart again.
Click to expand...

The RAM is ECC and matched identical? I noticed on my cMP that a mismatched pair suddenly was unacceptable to the OS, causing rebooting and sometimes no full booting up. Went with perfect matched ECC and all was fixed. Not sure if that is the case with your issue, though.
 
Disconnect all external devices, except monitor, and pull all HDs from bays, do a pram reset, and then connect only the internal El Capitan drive.
What GPU are you using, also do you have a spare one available? (for testing purposes)
 
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mugwump said:
The RAM is ECC and matched identical? I noticed on my cMP that a mismatched pair suddenly was unacceptable to the OS, causing rebooting and sometimes no full booting up. Went with perfect matched ECC and all was fixed. Not sure if that is the case with your issue, though.
Click to expand...

Okay take out all the RAM stick, just put two in the top slot 4GB each to boot and same result. Boot half way and re-start. These are 4GB 800MHz DDR2 ECC Fully Buffered DIMM , they were bought at the same time from the same vendor.
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filmak said:
Disconnect all external devices, except monitor, and pull all HDs from bays, do a pram reset, and then connect only the internal El Capitan drive.
What GPU are you using, also do you have a spare one available? (for testing purposes)
Click to expand...
Disconnect all the external drives and wires, removed all HD, PRAM reset after 3 chimes, put back the internal EC drive, boot and restart half way through the progress bar. Try safe boot, restart 3/4 through the progress bar.
Graphic card is GE Force 8800 but no spare graphic cards lying around.
 
Last edited:
The 8800 is famous for failing, I have replaced ours in 2010, too.
I think that you should start from this one.
Can you find a GPU, even an unflashed PC one, just to check?
You can try several older cards like 5770 5870 680 7xx etc even a 9xx can work, with all pc cards you won't have a boot screen of course...
 
filmak said:
The 8800 is famous for failing, I have replaced ours in 2010, too.
I think that you should start from this one.
Can you find a GPU, even an unflashed PC one, just to check?
You can try several older cards like 5770 5870 680 7xx etc even a 9xx can work, with all pc cards you won't have a boot screen of course...
Click to expand...
Thanks for your suggestion, but at the moment, that is the only card i have in my possession, just wondering if the graphic card fails, won't i not even be able to see the boot screen ?
Does this motherboard has an on board GPU?
 
Boot in verbose mode. What is the last few lines of text before the computer spontaneously reboots? There is often a clue right there. Not always, but worth a try.
 
ActionableMango said:
Boot in verbose mode. What is the last few lines of text before the computer spontaneously reboots? There is often a clue right there. Not always, but worth a try.
Click to expand...

The last few lines of verbose before restarting

Please see attached. image1.PNG
 
Will it be possible to take the drive 1 (one with El Capitan) and put it in an external enclosure, and hook up to a MBP and see if it will boot. That way we can see if it is a hardware or software issue.
 
filmak said:
The 8800 is famous for failing, I have replaced ours in 2010, too.
I think that you should start from this one.
Can you find a GPU, even an unflashed PC one, just to check?
You can try several older cards like 5770 5870 680 7xx etc even a 9xx can work, with all pc cards you won't have a boot screen of course...
Click to expand...

Finally get my hands on a HD 5770 for Mac from my friend Mac Pro and it actually boot to the log screen, so it is the stupid Graphic Card. Thanks filmac, now just have to hunt one down.
 
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