MP 1,1-5,1 2010 Mac Pro will boot into Windows but not anything else - any idea??

[troy14]

Hey all, kind of a weird situation here I hope someone can help me.

I have a 2010 mac pro and I just came back from an extended deployment. I couldn't remember which of my SSDs was the one in my PC and MAC (they are both 500gb, same SSD) and I took them all out because I was going to sell each system.

Anyways I needed to use it real quick and put both SSDs in my Mac and it booted up into MacOS just fine. I used it for a bit and then it prompted to install a MacOS update.. at this point I wasn't really thinking and hit accept and went to bed.

I woke up and my MAC PRO is booted into my WINDOWS PC SSD!!! THIS IS NOT a Boot Camp installation. This was a 100% Windows PC (my gaming PC) SSD. I thought that was super strange - it worked fine. Literally down to the WiFi. Interesting I thought but I need my MacOS installation.

I tried to restart, reboot, command + r, anything and can't get it to boot nor even hear the startup chime, even with no drives installed. I've tried everything i can think of. I never get any picture nor sounds from my computer. I held the power button down and reset the SMC? but it did nothing except beep.

Anyone have anything I can try? It's weird the computer is fully functional for WINDOWS but can't get anything MAC to pop up.

 

[MandiMac]

Sounds like the bootfile has been tampered with. Maybe you have to find bootfile.sys (or boot.ini? Not sure how Windows calls it) and change the value there to the other SSD. But handle with care, I'm not sure if you could ever reverse that.

 

[tsialex]

Try to reset the NVRAM tree times consecutively, only let go after the fourth chime.

If after doing that you still can't boot your macOS SSD, you have a corrupt NVRAM/BootROM. If you dumped it before, flash your dump back.

 

[guzhogi]

Stupid question: did you restart while holding down the Option key? That should show you all available boot volumes

 

[MandiMac]

Stupid question: did you restart while holding down the Option key? That should show you all available boot volumes

This.

 

[mangombia]

If your OS installations are in the SATA ports, put a MacOS installation before Windows & reboot. If your MacOS installations are on SSDs residing on PCIe cards, pull any Windows SATA installation & reboot. Otherwise, like tsialex said, you've probably corrupted the BootROM.

 

[minifridge1138]

Try to reset the NVRAM tree times consecutively, only let go after the fourth chime.

If after doing that you still can't boot your macOS SSD, you have a corrupt NVRAM/BootROM. If you dumped it before, flash your dump back.

I’m not disagreeing, but how/why would a MacOS update corrupt the BootROM?

 

[mangombia]

I’m not disagreeing, but how/why would a MacOS update corrupt the BootROM?

tsialex can expound more authoritatively, but generally MacOS would not, Windows however, can and does infect the BootROM if OpenCore is not protecting it. For example, I was fairly careful about installing Win10 via the VMWare Fusion method in order to expressly protect my BootROM and setup as BootCamp ability to load it natively. However, in troubleshooting a recalcitrant OpenCore update I deleted the OC EFI and did an NVRAM reset intending to boot to Mojave and reinstitute OC. I forgot to pull my Win10 SATA drive (Catalina & Mojave reside on NVME drives), and on reboot my cMP booted to Win10 (the first bootable drive in the SATA chain - the cMP will boot from the first SATA bootable drive, and if none, then to NVME, if available). In so doing and without OC protecting the BootROM, Windows wrote very large security certificates to my BootROM, but fortunately it wasn't so completely filled to be corrupted. With tsialex's invaluable assistance we were able to rebuild and reflash my BootROM to clean those certificates and eliminate the memory fragmentation that had accumulated over the nearly 10+ years of the system's life.

 

[tsialex]

I’m not disagreeing, but how/why would a MacOS update corrupt the BootROM?

I'm missing why you are questioning macOS updates here at all, no one talked about it on this thread. The OP did talk about macOS update that reset, but it's not the problem here, the problem is booting UEFI Windows/SecureBoot after the reset.

Anyway, to corrupt a NVRAM volume (NVRAM volume is inside the same SPI flash memory that stores the Mac Pro BootROM), you don't need Windows UEFI/SecureBoot like what's probably caused OP problems. The filesystem used by the NVRAM volume is not robust enough for 11 years of heavy usage, nor the SPI flash memory itself (manufacture rated to just 100K cycles of erase/write). The NVRAM volume will fragment and corrupt itself over time, Windows UEFI SecureBoot just make it happen sooner since a lot of space is used to store the certificates, dbs and PKs of Microsoft SecureBoot inside the NVRAM - with less space the fragmentation that corrupts the NVRAM volume happens a lot faster.

Mac Pro early-2009, mid-2010, mid-2012 BootROM were designed for an era before iCloud and before all the heavy usage of the NVRAM to store all sorts of data/logs. Everyday we see people asking for help with dead backplanes, every one that don't have EFI_DONE LED lit when DIAG button is pressed is probably a corrupt BootROM or dead SPI flash.
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Btw, I have three backplanes here and two corrupted the SPI flash memory making the Mac Pro un-bootable. After desoldering and testing the SPI flash memories, I found that one had failed sectors while the other was totally dead. I replaced the SPI flash memories that store the BootROM for all three backplanes, after re-flashing the BootROM dumps, it's a $2 component that will probably fail at the most inconvenient time.

Edit:

Btw, I'm wrong that no one talked about macOS updates, @minifridge1138 is right that the OP did, but it's not the problem here.

 

[minifridge1138]

I'm missing why you are questioning macOS updates here at all, no one talked about it on this thread.

Yes they did. In the original question, the OP said the problem happened after their Mac

booted up into MacOS just fine. I used it for a bit and then it prompted to install a MacOS update.. at this point I wasn't really thinking and hit accept and went to bed.

Unless we’re reading two different threads...

 

[tsialex]

Yes they did. In the original question, the OP said the problem happened after their Mac


Unless we’re reading two different threads...

While this is a conjecture, OP probably installed the wrong SSD, a UEFI Windows install, to SATA port 1.

This has nothing with the fact that macOS updated while he was booted to it, but to the fact that after Mac Pro restarted and booted from the UEFI Windows SSD, all the SecureBoot mumbo jumbo was saved inside the NVRAM and can't change boot disks anymore.

When you have a full NVRAM store, you can't change boot disks. The next step on the BootROM corruption story is to become un-bootable.

Edit:

Btw, I'm wrong that no one talked about macOS updates, @minifridge1138 is right that the OP did, but it's not the problem here.

 

[minifridge1138]

Thanks for the explanation - the MacOS update wasn’t the problem. It just caused the Mac to reboot, but then Windows booted and bad things happened to the NVRam and the BootROM.

I wish I could offer a suggestion for the OP.

 

[troy14]

Wow! Thanks everyone for the replies.

I'm not sure how or why but I reset the NVRAM 3x times and it did not work. I then put my Mac OS SSD AND Windows SSD back in their 'original' configuration, reset the NVRAM 3x more times, and it booted into Mac OS. I then shut it down and pulled my Windows SSD and reboot it.

It all works again! And I'll never put my windows ssd anywhere near it again, lol.

 

[mangombia]

Wow! Thanks everyone for the replies.

I'm not sure how or why but I reset the NVRAM 3x times and it did not work. I then put my Mac OS SSD AND Windows SSD back in their 'original' configuration, reset the NVRAM 3x more times, and it booted into Mac OS. I then shut it down and pulled my Windows SSD and reboot it.

It all works again! And I'll never put my windows ssd anywhere near it again, lol.

You should copy your BootROM image using the ROMTool and search it to see how many times "secure" appears.

 

[troy14]

You should copy your BootROM image using the ROMTool and search it to see how many times "secure" appears.

Is this bad? Should I do anything about it?