2009 Mac Pro freezing after approx 2 minutes of running...

[Tifstorey]

Hi All,

Any advice is MUCH appreciated! I have a lot of work on at the moment and my Mac is just not responding.

Over the last week, it's frozen on me twice randomly - everything just froze and i had to force shutdown.

Last night, it did it again - but after force shutting it down and rebooting, after a minute it did it again. Now, it won't last for longer than 2 minutes before the whole system freezes.

I've checked all my HDDs and they're working ok. I read somewhere that an airport issue could cause these crashes, so I removed the wifi card i installed around 3 months ago, however the freezes are still happening.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this? I rebooted via recovery mode but it freezes in this as well so I can't even reinstall Mavericks.

If anyone can offer any advice, it'd be much appreciated! Going to get behind on projects here.

Many thanks,

-Tif

Mac is a 2009 2.66Ghz
OS X Mavericks

 

[h9826790]

If your computer freeze even in recovery mode, it's more like a hardware issue.

Did you do the normal stuff yet? (e.g. PRAM / SMC reset)

How you know the HDD is OK?

Are you still using ECC RAM?

Is there any relatively new external hardware?

 

[Loa]

Hello,

Physically remove ALL disks and try booting. You should get a ? icon. Does it freeze then?

Loa

 

[Tifstorey]

Hi, and thanks for the responses.

No new hardware has been fitted other than the Airport extreme card which i fit directly onto the logic board. I've now removed this but the crashes/freezes still happen.

I've just tried resetting the PRAM & SMC and now upon booting it up it's asking what language I'd like, going straight into recovery mode.
It still crashes after 2-3 minutes of being on here.

My worry is, If i reinstall and it crashes during installation, I'm going to be left with a mess.

@ Loa - I'll try your suggestion and get back to you. Thank you,

-Tif

 

[Tifstorey]

Hello,

Physically remove ALL disks and try booting. You should get a ? icon. Does it freeze then?

Loa

Just tried this but unfortunately after 3-4 minutes of the ? flashing, it eventually froze on a still image of it.

I've also just tried running the Apple Hardware Test but I couldn't seem to get it working when holding down 'D' on boot up.

Can anyone think of anything to try?

Thanks

 

[TruckdriverSean]

Just tried this but unfortunately after 3-4 minutes of the ? flashing, it eventually froze on a still image of it.

I've also just tried running the Apple Hardware Test but I couldn't seem to get it working when holding down 'D' on boot up.

Can anyone think of anything to try?

Thanks

Any diagnostic LEDs lit up on the inside?

 

[Tifstorey]

Any diagnostic LEDs lit up on the inside?

Hi Sean, No - No internal LEDs showing up anywhere I can see.

It freezes, but the computer seems to be running normally - fans/GPU etc.

 

[Tifstorey]

Ok, fixed it.

Turns out it was the logic board. I've replaced it and it's, so far, working without a hitch.

Thanks to everyone for the replies, appreciate it.