MP 1,1-5,1 Mac Pro 4,1 with a windows hard drive, cant get back to OS X!

[jimmyducati]

I have a mac pro 4,1 that has a total of 4 hard drives installed, one with 10.11.x (on a solid state drive), one with windows 7 and two as mass storage drives. I also have a Radeon HD 7970 3GB graphics card that was "for a mac" but does not give me the boot screen on start up.

Last week I had the need to switch to my windows 7 HD, so I changed the boot priority of the drives so it would restart in windows. Ive been using windows 7 for the last week and wanted to switch back to mac, so as I had before, I restarted the computer and attempted to press the option/alt key to bring up the Hard Drive screen but it didn't work... I must have restarted the computer 20 times in hopes of getting the timing just right (no boot screen or sound) and every time it would continue to start windows.

I got the smart idea (keep in mind that I am not computer savvy) to shut it down, unplug it and remove the windows 7 HD from the computer entirely thinking this would make the computer go to the nest HD in the que, it doesn't. I get a blueish screen for 20ish seconds, then a black screen that basically says no bootable drive found, insert bootable drive and press any key. I have plugged in my external b/u drive and nothing. its like my magic keyboard isn't even plugged in.

If I reinstall the windows drive, it starts windows normally.

when Im in windows, i can get the the disk manager and it says the other drives are present and working, but of course I can't access them in windows.

I have El Capitan installed on the 1tb SSD that is installed in the mac pro, any tips on how to get it to boot as a mac again??

P.S. I know this isn't the most efficient way to run windows on a mac, but its the easiest way to get a smart card reader to work. Virtually every military related website I need to go to while in windows requires me to log in using my ID card.

 

[Plutonius]

I don't believe that iOS ever ran on a Mac Pro 4,1 ?

 

[jimmyducati]

it actually ran on a 3,1. Ive had it on both.

 

[09872738]

it actually ran on a 3,1. Ive had it on both.

I guess you mean Mac OS X/macOS. iOS actually never ran on Macs

 

[jimmyducati]

my bad, EL Capitan is what I have on the SSD. Fast fingers, slow brain

 

[Snow Tiger]

Try PRAMing your Mac and see if that gives macOS priority as a boot device . It would not hurt to have your macOS drive in HDD Bay number 1 ( far left side of the four SATA backplane interfaces ) , as that should be the first place a boot device is looked for during start up .

 

[jimmyducati]

No dice on resetting the PRAM... no boot screen, no start up music, no pram reset. It goes straight to black with the SSD (10.11 installed) in slot 1 and no other drives installed..

 

[jimmyducati]

When I swapped the OEM video card back in, I get the blue screen for 30 seconds before it tells me there is no bootable device.. I give up

 

[someoldguy]

Did you install windows 7 via Boot Camp ? If so , did you try changing the startup drive from within Windows 7 via the Boot Camp utility in Win 7?

 

[tsialex]

When I swapped the OEM video card back in, I get the blue screen for 30 seconds before it tells me there is no bootable device.. I give up

Follow the steps below:

1. Shutdown your Mac Pro, remove everything from PCIe slots besides an OEM GPU,
2. Remove all disks from your Mac besides a disk with only macOS (preferably High Sierra or earlier, don't use a disk with more than one SO installed, don't use a disk with BootCamp or Windows) installed on SATA bay 1,
3. Power-up and clear the NVRAM three times sequentially, your Mac will start up in a fail-safe mode booting from the macOS disk on SATA bay 1

If you can get there, dump your BootROM, you have a high probability of having a corrupted NVRAM volume.

 

[jimmyducati]

I tried the steps below, and now it will never work:
1. get frustrated a/f
2. throw the mac pro across the room, bounces off the dresser
3. continue to throw it at the concrete floor until pieces come out
4. get coffee

Nothing I was doing would even bring a start up screen up. It was an old bastardized mac anyway.

Thanks for the help guys, we can close this thread

 

[-Drizzt-]

Solution was to put OEM GPU in it, boot the computer while holding Option or ALT, and choosing macOS from the boot menu.

In case it can save an other MacPro

 

[jimmyducati]

Negative, as described above I already swapped the original gpu in and got a blue screen, followed by the no bootable drive screen. no startup chime, no boot screen.

I think the ssd was corrupted, maybe from not being used in a while..

 

[MacProM@ne]

Hijacking thread for the same purpose.
I bought a MacPro tower 4,1 with OS 10.11 installed.
When I first tried to boot it up, I used an ssd with High Sierra and planned to do a firmware upgrade to 5,1 then Bootrom upgrade to 144.0.0... (I was assuming none of these had been updated since in came with OS 10.11 on a HDD).
When powering on, I got the folder with a circle and line through it (no bootable disks). I have multiple mac pro's, so i started troubleshooting.

During the process of troubleshooting I became unable to even get the folder screen, and no boot chimes ever. I'm using a USB keyboard (verified working), tried holding alt, tried holding command + R. Just a black screen regardless of video cable or video card. No red lights on the motherboard are lit, the power led remains a solid white, hdd/ssd tries to work for a second and then stops. Removed all RAM and re-installed one by one until flashing power led went away. SMC reset, PRAM reset. Blown out dust with compressed air throughout.

Here's what I verified works fine in other mac pro's but not in this one:
SSD with High Sierra
Video card (the original gray one)
CPU tray
RAM

Here's the (known working)parts I swapped into this tower to troubleshoot.
CPU trays
RAM
Video Cards (RX580 and original gray ones both at the same time and seperately)
HDD's/ SSD's/ NVMe's
And finally the Power Supply...

Any other suggestions to try? Is it the motherboard? I know that the tower was dropped at some point, but was told it was working when it shipped.
[automerge]1594411771[/automerge]
Also tried booting with no ssd/hdd installed, and tried booting from usb install drive. None of that matters because i can never see anything on the screen anyway. I haven't seen any screen activity since the original gray screen with no bootable drive logo. I've tried booting probably 50+ times since then with variations of equipment, and even the original configuration won't give me the gray screen anymore.

 

[KeesMacPro]

Hijacking thread for the same purpose.
I bought a MacPro tower 4,1 with OS 10.11 installed.

Your post is not related to an install of Windows but anyway you could execute the following steps:
-install the OEM GT120 GPU ( grey one)
-install the 10.11 HDD in one of the SATA bays .
-when you hear the chime, keep pressed command+alt+P+R and wait until you hear the chime for the 4th time, and see if the MP boots.
If it doesn't boot (circle with line ), make a bootable usb installer of Mavericks, Yosemite or El Capitan and install one of these OS on the internal HDD .

Since the MP is very likely unflashed (still 4,1) the following will not work:
-High Sierra needs 5,1 firmware
-RX 580 needs at least Sierra or higher to work.
-afaik NVMe will not work/not bootable in an unflashed 4,1
-installing the GT120 + RX 580 at the same time will not work/ lead to issues

Once it works, you could flash the firmware to 5,1 and do the firmware upgrade to MP51.0089.B00 by installing( not swapping drives) High Sierra .
With HS installed you can swap the GT120 for the RX 580 and install Mojave (144.0.0.0.0).

 

[MacProM@ne]

Thank you so much. I didn’t realized that high Sierra required 5,1. I’m fairly sure that’s my ticket.

 

[MacProM@ne]

So I’ve tried all of the suggestions. I’m thinking there’s something else I don’t know about firmware. Tried installing El Capitan and sierra on a flashed-to 5,1 mac pro 3.5” HDD. It always hangs when trying to boot the installler. It gets the full progress bar filled up and then just never boots. I’m using a RX580 and this computer has opencore on it with 144.0.0.0 bootrom. Do I need the gt120 in it?

Alternatively, I can’t get any boot chime out of the tower I’m trying to work on. No length of time trying to reset pram or smc changes that. I never get any screen graphics from it. Tried booting with every configuration and from installers for El Capitan and sierra. Holding down option Key, holding down cmd R, nothing makes any difference. That’s why I’m trying to install sierra using the working 5,1.

 

[tsialex]

So I’ve tried all of the suggestions. I’m thinking there’s something else I don’t know about firmware. Tried installing El Capitan and sierra on a flashed-to 5,1 mac pro 3.5” HDD. It always hangs when trying to boot the installler. It gets the full progress bar filled up and then just never boots. I’m using a RX580 and this computer has opencore on it with 144.0.0.0 bootrom. Do I need the gt120 in it?

Alternatively, I can’t get any boot chime out of the tower I’m trying to work on. No length of time trying to reset pram or smc changes that. I never get any screen graphics from it. Tried booting with every configuration and from installers for El Capitan and sierra. Holding down option Key, holding down cmd R, nothing makes any difference. That’s why I’m trying to install sierra using the working 5,1.

El Capitan don't support RX 580 GPUs at all. Sierra 10.12.6 has initial support for it, but it's buggy and slow. Use another GPU.

 

[MacProM@ne]

Ok I tried using the gt120 as suggested on both machines. All other hard drives removed, only a hard drive formatted to Mac OS extended journaled with the Sierra installer on it. I gave it about 6 hours to boot up on both computers. On the working 5,1 tower it made it all the way to full progress bar on the apple logo boot screen and stayed there for 4 hours or more. On the other tower, no video or audio was ever seen or heard. Still don’t have sierra installed on any drives. Should I try dosdude’s patcher for sierra?

 

[tsialex]

Ok I tried using the gt120 as suggested on both machines. All other hard drives removed, only a hard drive formatted to Mac OS extended journaled with the Sierra installer on it. I gave it about 6 hours to boot up on both computers. On the working 5,1 tower it made it all the way to full progress bar on the apple logo boot screen and stayed there for 4 hours or more. On the other tower, no video or audio was ever seen or heard. Still don’t have sierra installed on any drives. Should I try dosdude’s patcher for sierra?

I'm failing to understand why you are messing with OpenCore and dosdude hacked installs if you can't even get an officially supported install working…

If your Mac Pro still has a MP4,1 firmware, use a fully supported macOS release, 10.6 to 10.11, to get it working again (remember that you need to go back the system clock because the signing certificates of the old installers are now expired). Then you do the cross flash of the MP5,1 firmware to it.

Edit: correct a typo on the official supported releases.

 

[MacProM@ne]

I'm failing to understand why you are messing with OpenCore and dosdude hacked installs if you can't even get an officially supported install working…

If your Mac Pro still has a MP4,1 firmware, use a fully supported macOS release, 10.6 to 10.11, to get it working again (remember that you need to go back the system clock because the signing certificates of the old installers are now expired).

I haven’t used any hacked software yet. I just asked if I should be because I was getting no response trying to install a vanilla natively supported OS. I had no idea about the system clock, how should I change that? Maybe there’s a thread I should know about that I don’t know about?
Are you thinking that I should start to see any type of visual or audible indicator once I insert a HDD with sierra installed into the 4,1? I’m just at a loss as to why I’m getting no indicators at all.

 

[KeesMacPro]

Have you tried to make a bootable installer of El Capitan or a previous OS?

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I haven’t used any hacked software yet. I just asked if I should be because I was getting no response trying to install a vanilla natively supported OS. I had no idea about the system clock, how should I change that? Maybe there’s a thread I should know about that I don’t know about?
Are you thinking that I should start to see any type of visual or audible indicator once I insert a HDD with sierra installed into the 4,1? I’m just at a loss as to why I’m getting no indicators at all.

I see that you didn't pay attention to what tsialex had said.
I think he said you may troubleshoot this way:
- Removed all HDD from your MP 4,1 (Not-working MP)
- Removed all VGA cards too
- Put back the GT120 in
- Install OSX El Capitan (10.11.6) to a HDD in another working MP
- Bring that HDD with El Capitan you just installed back to the not-working MP
- Boot the Not-working MP and do PRAM reset. If fails, try another keyboard.
- Reboot to see if it would get you to OSX El Capitan.

I once stuck with the black boot-screen on my MP1,1 while trying to install Windows 7 64bit (unsupported) to it. Holding down the Alt key at boot didn't work. Couldn't reset PRAM either.
Running out of option, I took my MP to a local service shop and asked them wipe-out all HDDs and re-install OS X Lion on 1 HDD for me.
Later I found out that my keyboard (a no-brand mechanical USB keyboard) did not work in pre-boot phase, even though it worked perfectly after getting into OS desktop.
After I borrow a cheap Dell USB keyboard and plug in, all of the pre-boot key combinations work like a charm.

 

[tsialex]

I haven’t used any hacked software yet. I just asked if I should be because I was getting no response trying to install a vanilla natively supported OS. I had no idea about the system clock, how should I change that? Maybe there’s a thread I should know about that I don’t know about?
Are you thinking that I should start to see any type of visual or audible indicator once I insert a HDD with sierra installed into the 4,1? I’m just at a loss as to why I’m getting no indicators at all.

Sierra won't work if your Mac Pro still have a MP4,1 firmware.

MP4,1 macOS support starts with 10.5.6 and ends with 10.11.6, but it's dependent on the GPU, the only two that covers the full range are Apple NVIDIA GT120 and ATI HD 4870, newer GPUs require newer macOS releases.

To change the clock, boot the macOS installer, open the Terminal from the menu, then use the date command:

date 010113002010

This one will set to Fri Jan 1 13:00:00 -02 2010. Use man date to know the format.

 

[MacProM@ne]

I'm currently trying to install El Capitan on a hdd using the working 5,1 with the gt120 installed. It's doing something I suddenly recognized from earlier in the process of troubleshooting. It shows the apple logo, starts to go through the progress bar, gets halfway through, goes to black screen and then nothing else after that. My computer monitor generally goes to sleep in 10 seconds if it doesn't detect a video signal, after halfway through the apple logo progress bar when the screen goes to black, my monitor acts as if it intermittently detects a video signal and never goes to sleep. My monitor is an ultrawide 2650x1080 resolution screen. Could this have something to do with the video suddenly going out? The initial apple logo progress screen fills the entire screen until it goes black. And finally after about 10 minutes of black screen, the mac pro goes to sleep with the fading in and out power led. When I wake it, still black screen but video signal detected like before.

Side note: Please bear with me if I make mistakes or misremember something. I've had a brain injury and a large portion of my short term memory is non-functional. I usually take notes to help me remember my progress in things, but didn't expect this to be such an adventure as I'm fairly sure I've done this process in the past successfully, but not positive. Anyway, it becomes difficult to remember what I've tried and haven't tried but sometimes when you guy ask a question it sparks a memory. I've started taking notes of what I've tried now though.