Mac Pro 4.1 booting behaviour

[El Awesome]

Hey guys,

I own a 2009 2.66 Quad MP 4.1 with 16GB RAM, two Samsung 830 128GB SSDs (on one of them there is OS X installed, on the other Win7) and a EFI-flashed GTX 570 2560MB from MacVideoCards.

When I press the powerbutton, it takes 14.8 seconds until the chime comes. Then, another 9.3 seconds pass until the apple shows up. From there, it takes another 5.7 secs loading and 4.8 secs until I see my desktop.
All together 34.8 seconds for booting. Isn't that a bit long for a good MP with a SSD?
I'm mostly worried about the 15s waiting for the chime and the 9s for initializing the SSD, the rest seems fine.

Even my Late 08 MBP gives the chime 3-4s after pressing the power button and shows the apple just a few secs afterwards.

Shutdown times are also not impressive, 20s and NOTHING opened, fresh boot before. Regular shutdown times are 30-40s...

The SSDs are install in Bay 1 and the lower DVD drive bay, today I got a PCIe SATA-III card. I'll install it and check if it makes any difference.

Is there else anything I can do?

Funnily, while measuring the time, the Mac suddendly booted into verbose mode without any letter pressed on the keyboard. I typed "exit" and everything worked fine. While shutting down to take another measuring, it said on the upper right corner something like "CPU unable to unmount drive -y" or something for a few seconds, then the screen turned black.

Thanks!

 

[rickvanr]

Is this is really an issue? No.

My Mac Pro hangs when I have a FW800 drive attached. Do you have any peripherals attached? Could be something simple like that.

If you really want speed, RAID the SSDs.

 

[beto2k7]

Mine boots in under 10 seconds with 2xOCZ Vertex 4 128GB in raid 0 with a MVC GTX570 as well In system preferences make sure your startup disk is selected correctly.

 

[El Awesome]

Is this is really an issue? No.

My Mac Pro hangs when I have a FW800 drive attached. Do you have any peripherals attached? Could be something simple like that.

If you really want speed, RAID the SSDs.

Yes, I actually do have a FW800 attached.
Well, you know, if I spend that much money on a machine want to get it working perfectly.

Mine boots in under 10 seconds with 2xOCZ Vertex 4 128GB in raid 0 with a MVC GTX570 as well In system preferences make sure your startup disk is selected correctly.

That's the speed I want to reach
Correct disk is selected.

I'll RAID0 the both SSDs, let's see what difference that is going to make.

 

[darkcoupon]

It does seem suspect, mostly because of the 15 seconds before chime and boot screen. That should be almost immediate. Your other post did mention issues with your graphics card, so that MAY be contributing to the issue, but it's hard to say if that would contribute to slow boot times. Any boot times over 20 seconds on an SSD, even on a non-RAID SATA II setup, is pretty slow. My 2007 Macbook with an OCZ Vertex running at 1.5Gb SATA speeds still boots in about 14 seconds.

I would disconnect all peripherals and reboot. If that works, plug them all back in one at a time and reboot until you find the one that's causing the issue. If that doesn't work, try resetting PRAM. If that doesn't work, try another graphics card. Finally, if nothing else works, try a fresh OSX install and see if that does anything.

If you're still having issues beyond that, try booting from a different drive. I could go on, but there are just way too many possibilities to list.

----------

Actually, after re-reading your post, it sounds like once you get the boot screen you're booting in about 11 seconds, which sounds normal for an SATA II SSD. I would have to say it's a good chance that your third party graphics card is delaying the startup somehow. I would bet $10 the problem is solved if you re-install your original GPU

 

[El Awesome]

It does seem suspect, mostly because of the 15 seconds before chime and boot screen. That should be almost immediate. Your other post did mention issues with your graphics card, so that MAY be contributing to the issue, but it's hard to say if that would contribute to slow boot times. Any boot times over 20 seconds on an SSD, even on a non-RAID SATA II setup, is pretty slow. My 2007 Macbook with an OCZ Vertex running at 1.5Gb SATA speeds still boots in about 14 seconds.

I would disconnect all peripherals and reboot. If that works, plug them all back in one at a time and reboot until you find the one that's causing the issue. If that doesn't work, try resetting PRAM. If that doesn't work, try another graphics card. Finally, if nothing else works, try a fresh OSX install and see if that does anything.

If you're still having issues beyond that, try booting from a different drive. I could go on, but there are just way too many possibilities to list.

----------

Actually, after re-reading your post, it sounds like once you get the boot screen you're booting in about 11 seconds, which sounds normal for an SATA II SSD. I would have to say it's a good chance that your third party graphics card is delaying the startup somehow. I would bet $10 the problem is solved if you re-install your original GPU

I'll give it a try.
Still have my original GT120 lying next to the machine.

Update 1: I plugged out everything including secondary monitor. Just my ACD is now connected.

Still 15s until chime comes up. Everything pretty much the same, just that it shut down in less than a second (newer saw this before!)

Update 2: Change the GPU, my old GT120 is now installed. No difference, booting time is even worse.
The GTX570 feels snappier...

I'm going to install my GTX570 again...


I have a rather fresh install of OS X, I updated to 10.8.2 a few days ago.
I disconnected EVERYTHING execpt my primary display, an Apple Cinema Display.
And you, my friend, just lost 10$

 

[darkcoupon]

I'll give it a try.
Still have my original GT120 lying next to the machine.

Update 1: I plugged out everything including secondary monitor. Just my ACD is now connected.

Still 15s until chime comes up. Everything pretty much the same, just that it shut down in less than a second (newer saw this before!)

Update 2: Change the GPU, my old GT120 is now installed. No difference, booting time is even worse.
The GTX570 feels snappier...

I'm going to install my GTX570 again...


I have a rather fresh install of OS X, I updated to 10.8.2 a few days ago.
I disconnected EVERYTHING execpt my primary display, an Apple Cinema Display.
And you, my friend, just lost 10$

Dang!

Have you tried resetting the SMC? Turn off the MP and unplug the power cord, wait 15 seconds, while the cord is still unplugged press and hold the power button for 15 seconds, wait 5 more seconds and plug it in and power it on with the power button. (I've heard you can do this without holding the power button as well)

 

[666sheep]

14.8 seconds until the chime comes.

This is the time which your MP needs to perform POST. Its longitude depends on amount of hardware you have installed: RAM sticks, PCIe cards, drives (internal and external). Rest of time is mostly HDD and OS dependent (i.e. drive speed, OS and amount of kexts which need to be loaded to run all installed devices).

If it bothers you that much, try removing RAM and other devices you have installed and test which one causes this delay. You can reset PRAM after every removed device (not necessary but you'll be sure that nothing left there from previous config).

From what you wrote, it seems to me that it could be problem with one of your drives.

 

[El Awesome]

Never checked drives so far. I know that it's not one of my SSDs, because the issue has been before.

When I log in, I get a message that all my RAM-sticks are placed in the correct slot - I haven't found a way to turn that off. Could this be related to my delay?
Is there a way to disable POST?
I removed everything except RAM and my drives. So it must be the RAM, because it already was when I got the machine. It didn't bother me too much then, but now I find it somehow annoying. Especially when I don't know why.

SMC reset has been done quite a few times. I think about upgrading to the 5.1 firmware, maybe I'll get some improvement there.

 

[666sheep]

POST cannot be disabled. Otherwise computer won't ever know if it has CPU installed
There was some workaround to Memory Slot Utility issue, search the forum. Start here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1327890/

 

[El Awesome]

POST cannot be disabled. Otherwise computer won't ever know if it has CPU installed
There was some workaround to Memory Slot Utility issue, search the forum. Start here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1327890/

Thanks, this worked!
I have no idea why enabling and logging into the root account helped me with this problems (I guess something wrong with the permissions), but it did

 

[alexdingley]

So... that fixed it?

So... you had long boot chimes on your tower... and enabling root, switching users into root, then switching back out to your normal user fixed the issue?

I've had the issue for a long time, and just tried that... to no avail. I guess I can try it again.

 

[El Awesome]

So... you had long boot chimes on your tower... and enabling root, switching users into root, then switching back out to your normal user fixed the issue?

I've had the issue for a long time, and just tried that... to no avail. I guess I can try it again.

This only made the RAM issue go away.
I have been too lazy so far to disconnect everything from my Mac Pro and then check.

I mean, POST has still a lot to do (3HDDs, 2 SSDs, one external FW-HDD, a flashed PC GPU) but still, 15s POST is too much.