Mac Pro 4,1 Often Booting to Black Screen

[kingseamus]

I've got an early 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 that's often booting to a black screen that hangs indefinitely until I manually restart and try to power on again. This seems to happen about 60% of the time when I try to boot up. Tried resetting PRAM and NVRAM but these resets didn't resolve the issue.

Anyone else experienced this issue?

Some other info about my system:

• Running 10.11.6
• Flashed GTX 980 Ti from MacVidCards
• Main drive is a 1TB SSD with a Bootcamp partition for Windows

 

[h9826790]

I've got an early 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 that's often booting to a black screen that hangs indefinitely until I manually restart and try to power on again. This seems to happen about 60% of the time when I try to boot up. Tried resetting PRAM and NVRAM but these resets didn't resolve the issue.

Anyone else experienced this issue?

Some other info about my system:

• Running 10.11.6
• Flashed GTX 980 Ti from MacVidCards
• Main drive is a 1TB SSD with a Bootcamp partition for Windows

Apart from the above list, any other self upgrade?

 

[thornslack]

My gut says it is booting up into windows improperly.

 

[kingseamus]

Apart from the above list, any other self upgrade?

Apart from the above list, any other self upgrade?

I also have two sticks of 16 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC RAM installed and an Angelbird MX2 2TB PCIe-based SSD in my one of the PCIe slots.

 

[handheldgames]

When you boot into macOS, does the problem happen?
Have you tried with an alternate video card?

 

[kohlson]

My gut says it is booting up into windows improperly.

If you try selecting the Startup Disk first in SysPref, does that work better?

 

[kingseamus]

When you boot into macOS, does the problem happen?
Have you tried with an alternate video card?

No alternate video card, and the problem pops up when booting into both macOS and Windows (though...perhaps less frequently on Windows?)
[doublepost=1531723451][/doublepost]

If you try selecting the Startup Disk first in SysPref, does that work better?

Unfortunately it doesn't. I'm going to have to be a bit more attentive to this but my perception has been that booting into Windows tends to be more successful (though I will still sometimes get that black screen upon start up in Windows).
[doublepost=1531723709][/doublepost]Every time (booting to macOS, at least) it successfully boots, there will be a inevitable period of about 10-30 seconds or so of black screen followed by a series of command prompt lines of white text that begin to fill the screen.

Though this happens quickly and is a bit difficult to capture, I'll try to get footage of these lines via so I can examine what they say.

 

[MIKX]

No alternate video card, and the problem pops up when booting into both macOS and Windows (though...perhaps less frequently on Windows?)
[doublepost=1531723451][/doublepost]
Every time (booting to macOS, at least) it successfully boots, there will be a inevitable period of about 10-30 seconds or so of black screen followed by a series of command prompt lines of white text that begin to fill the screen.

Though this happens quickly and is a bit difficult to capture, I'll try to get footage of these lines via so I can examine what they say.

I have seen a few other posts about these " flashing, pixilated " white lines appearing towards the bottom right of the monitor at boot up . .. . . I hope it's not malicious. I've seen it too in older installs, not happening in my current fresh installs of Sierra or High Sierra. A new thread devoted to this might yield some info. Please do make a new thread if tyou can get some pics of the effect.

 

[kingseamus]

I have seen a few other posts about these " flashing, pixilated " white lines appearing towards the bottom right of the monitor at boot up . .. . . I hope it's not malicious. I've seen it too in older installs, not happening in my current fresh installs of Sierra or High Sierra. A new thread devoted to this might yield some info. Please do make a new thread if tyou can get some pics of the effect.

Fortunately I don't think it's anything malicious. They're white lines on a black screen that look like command lines, for lack of a better term--the kinds of white lines that one would see when using an old operating system. A Google search I just did suggests that this is called "verbose mode."

I'm not sure if the Mac Pro often failing to boot is being caused by the graphics card not being recognized upon start up, since it's a flashed graphics card, or if it has something to do with the Windows partition on my main drive. Could be something else entirely...wish I knew!