Mac Pro 5,1 turns on but doesn't boot

[Swervin81]

I recently bought a refurbed mid 2010 Mac Pro for work purposes.After going through the installation process, I decided to install my PCIe m.2 adapter for my 960 EVO SSD (which I planned to migrate the OS onto, as I was on the NVMe supporting High Sierra) as well as a USB 3.1 gen 1 PCIe expansion card I bought from OWC. After I did that, the computer now refuses to boot. There is:

- No boot/POST chime
- No video or audio
- No USB devices detected (so I can't use keyboard commands)
- Power light is solid
- No LED's beside RAM slots are lit (which I'd assume indicates the RAM is fine)
- A brief flash of red LED on the LED right beside the corner of the CPU heatsink when the machine is powered on and when I force turn it off.
- The case fans, PSU fan, and GPU fan all spin, indicating that power is flowing
- My PCIe m.2 adapter does have an LED on, indicating it should be functioning and that it is receiving power. Curiously, this only happens when I install it in an x4 slot... it doesn't receive power in the x16 slot.
- When pressing the DIAG button on the backplate, I get the following LED's: PSU PWROK (green), 5V STDBY (yellow), SYS PG (green), EFI DONE (green), CPU OK (green)

I've tried, removing the hard drives, the PCIe cards and GPU, the RAM, and the optical drives, and no combination at all is letting my computer boot up. Even going back to the way I got it with neither of the PCIe expansion/adapters in, it still doesn't POST. I've tried unplugging and replugging, power cycling, SMC reset... nothing works and I'm at my wit's end here.

 

[h9826790]

1) You can't boot from NVMe (at least not without boot re-direction), HS just support NVMe as data drive, you can't boot into an OS from a drive that require the OS driver to function properly (same situation as USB 3.0). In other word, unless the cMP's firmware support NVMe booting, you can't boot from it (regardless OS version).

2) Try to change the battery. If the battery is dead, the cMP may shows identical symptoms.

3) If a new battery doesn't work, and you can't even boot with the "stock" config. Contact the seller ASAP to ask for refund. There is no point to diagnose this kind of issue if you can get a refund.

4) Your "No video and audio" means white screen, no Apple logo. Or black screen? That can make a big difference if you can't get a refund and forced to find the root cause.

 

[Swervin81]

1) You can't boot from NVMe (at least not without boot re-direction), HS just support NVMe as data drive, you can't boot into an OS from a drive that require the OS driver to function properly (same situation as USB 3.0). In other word, unless the cMP's firmware support NVMe booting, you can't boot from it (regardless OS version).

2) Try to change the battery. If the battery is dead, the cMP may shows identical symptoms.

3) If a new battery doesn't work, and you can't even boot with the "stock" config. Contact the seller ASAP to ask for refund. There is no point to diagnose this kind of issue if you can get a refund.

4) Your "No video and audio" means white screen, no Apple logo. Or black screen? That can make a big difference if you can't get a refund and forced to find the root cause.

I didn't know about 1) dang. Thanks for the heads up.

2) The battery... as in, the cMOS battery? I'm not sure where it is. Is it the large thing just above the double wide PCIe x16 slot?

3) I'll definitely try to do that.

4) No video as in my monitor does not even get a signal (black screen I guess?). It works fine on my laptop connection, so it's not the monitor. Before the upgrade attempt, I ran the system and while everything mostly seemed fine, there was a massive flickering issue I couldn't get past. It made installing the OS an utter nightmare, It was so bizarre because it worked just fine during the boot screen and even in boot device selection screen, but as soon as the OS loaded, flicker away..

 

[h9826790]

I didn't know about 1) dang. Thanks for the heads up.

2) The battery... as in, the cMOS battery? I'm not sure where it is. Is it the large thing just above the double wide PCIe x16 slot?

3) I'll definitely try to do that.

4) No video as in my monitor does not even get a signal (black screen I guess?). It works fine on my laptop connection, so it's not the monitor. Before the upgrade attempt, I ran the system and while everything mostly seemed fine, there was a massive flickering issue I couldn't get past. It made installing the OS an utter nightmare, It was so bizarre because it worked just fine during the boot screen and even in boot device selection screen, but as soon as the OS loaded, flicker away..

2) Yes, that's the battery I was talking about, the big silver button battery on the logic board around the PCIe slots.

4) That's a sign that you may have a faulty GPU.

The boot screen is drove by the EFI. It only provide basic display.

But once OS driver loaded. The GPU should able to go "full throttle", if the GPU is faulty, it may only able to provide basic display, but not working once the driver demand more from it.

And a faulty GPU can cause no boot, or black screen.

However, the good news is that's very easy to diagnose if the GPU is the problem. Because the cMP can boot "headless". If you haven't try that yet (It seems you've done it), remove the graphic card (nothing in any PCIe slot), the cMP may able to boot.

 

[ActionableMango]

If the computer is not even POSTing, then I don't think it is the CMOS battery. Personally I would return the computer.

But if you are curious for troubleshooting then you could follow the Service Manual starting on page 32 for POST verification, or Minimum Configuration Testing on page 33, or Startup/Power Issues on page 42.

 

[h9826790]

If the computer is not even POSTing, then I don't think it is the CMOS battery. Personally I would return the computer.

But if you are curious for troubleshooting then you could follow the Service Manual starting on page 32 for POST verification, or Minimum Configuration Testing on page 33, or Startup/Power Issues on page 42.

Not sure, my suggestion base on this thread.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-wont-boot-up.2048883/#post-24657657

The 5,1 may have similar behaviour. Replace (or temporarily remove) the battery may able to fix a no POST cMP.

 

[Swervin81]

Not sure, my suggestion base on this thread.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mac-pro-wont-boot-up.2048883/#post-24657657

The 5,1 may have similar behaviour. Replace (or temporarily remove) the battery may able to fix a no POST cMP.

I didn't even need to replace the cMOS battery, apparently. Now the machine POSTs fine with everything, including my upgrades inside.

The only problem is that damned flickering is still happening. Looks like it's all but confirmed it's a GPU issue. Fortunately, the seller has shipped my a replacement GPU of the same kind (Radeon 5770), so now I just gotta wait.

 

[JedNZ]

I've just had a similar issue with my cMP 4,1>5,1

I seldom shutdown my cMP - maybe only once every fortnight to 3 weeks, and usually only when I install software or updates that either demands a restart or where I feel it's about time to go an ol' restart.

Two weeks ago I updated Paragon's NTFS for Mac, which requires a restart. Upon Restart… nothing. Power button LED was showing, but no other signs of life (no red LEDs, drives not spinning, nothing on my display). I held the power button down to shut it down, waiting a minute then started it back up again. Nothing again. I then reset PRAM (Boot > Cmd+Opt+P+R) and booted up to the normal kernel crash thingy due to my NVMe kext failing to start, which is caused because SIP has been enabled after a PRAM reset. So I had to reboot into Recovery to disable SIP, and upon booting again my cMP booted correctly. I checked Startup Disk in System Preferences and it was not showing a startup disk, so I changed that to my primary disk. System Profile shows all my ram is showing, so I don't think it's a ram failure.

3 days ago I shut down again after playing some games, and booted up the machine the next morning. I again got no boot chime, no spinning-up of drives, no video, no red LEDs from ram/CPU tray that I could see. I held down the power button to shut the cMP off, waited 1 minute and tried booting up again. Nothing. Hmm.

I then unplugged the power cable, waited 20 seconds, plugged the power cable back in, waited 10 seconds (SMC reset?) and tried starting up again, and got the familiar whirring as the HDs and GPUs spinned up, and my cMP burst into life. I checked in System Preferences and shows my boot drive is correctly selected.

Seems a bit weird that all of a sudden both restarts and shutdowns have resulted in my system not starting up as it should. It's only been two occasions that its done it - the first time was a warm restart, while the second one was a cold start-up, so it's hardly conclusive that I do in fact have a major issue. But I did read somewhere that other cMP users suffered similar problems after doing their FW upgrade, and so am wondering if it's something to do with this. My current FW Boot ROM version is MP51.0084.B00

Any suggestions? Do I keep investigating (anything you might suggest I do) or just leave it, as my cMP is running perfectly fine. See my sig for my full configuration.

 

[h9826790]

I've just had a similar issue with my cMP 4,1>5,1

I seldom shutdown my cMP - maybe only once every fortnight to 3 weeks, and usually only when I install software or updates that either demands a restart or where I feel it's about time to go an ol' restart.

Two weeks ago I updated Paragon's NTFS for Mac, which requires a restart. Upon Restart… nothing. Power button LED was showing, but no other signs of life (no red LEDs, drives not spinning, nothing on my display). I held the power button down to shut it down, waiting a minute then started it back up again. Nothing again. I then reset PRAM (Boot > Cmd+Opt+P+R) and booted up to the normal kernel crash thingy due to my NVMe kext failing to start, which is caused because SIP has been enabled after a PRAM reset. So I had to reboot into Recovery to disable SIP, and upon booting again my cMP booted correctly. I checked Startup Disk in System Preferences and it was not showing a startup disk, so I changed that to my primary disk. System Profile shows all my ram is showing, so I don't think it's a ram failure.

3 days ago I shut down again after playing some games, and booted up the machine the next morning. I again got no boot chime, no spinning-up of drives, no video, no red LEDs from ram/CPU tray that I could see. I held down the power button to shut the cMP off, waited 1 minute and tried booting up again. Nothing. Hmm.

I then unplugged the power cable, waited 20 seconds, plugged the power cable back in, waited 10 seconds (SMC reset?) and tried starting up again, and got the familiar whirring as the HDs and GPUs spinned up, and my cMP burst into life. I checked in System Preferences and shows my boot drive is correctly selected.

Seems a bit weird that all of a sudden both restarts and shutdowns have resulted in my system not starting up as it should. It's only been two occasions that its done it - the first time was a warm restart, while the second one was a cold start-up, so it's hardly conclusive that I do in fact have a major issue. But I did read somewhere that other cMP users suffered similar problems after doing their FW upgrade, and so am wondering if it's something to do with this. My current FW Boot ROM version is MP51.0084.B00

Any suggestions? Do I keep investigating (anything you might suggest I do) or just leave it, as my cMP is running perfectly fine. See my sig for my full configuration.

There are few possibilities. e.g.

There was some SMC issue (software problem). The very 1st one you didn’t perform the SMC reset, so the bug still there, and if you are lucky enough, the PRAM reset may make you bypass the SMC issue and let your cMP boot again. However, because the bug still there. So, it happened again, until the 2nd failure, you perform a SMC reset and fix it.

Or

Some hardware is failing (e.g. PSU). However, by considering both time your Mac can boot right after you perform some kind of reset. I think the chance is not that high.

 

[Noiselab]

I didn't even need to replace the cMOS battery, apparently. Now the machine POSTs fine with everything, including my upgrades inside.

The only problem is that damned flickering is still happening. Looks like it's all but confirmed it's a GPU issue. Fortunately, the seller has shipped my a replacement GPU of the same kind (Radeon 5770), so now I just gotta wait.

Hi Swervin81,

I was wondering if actually it was the GPU, that caused the problem, if you remember after all this time...
I am having the exact issue with my Mac Pro 4,1>5,1 – 12 Core 2.4 GHz. Started with screen occasionally flickering for weeks. Then one day black screen... and never posted ever since. Replaced PSU in vain, then replaced back-plane logic board in vain...
(It is not my GPU NVidia GT120, which works fine in other machines)
Greets,
Nick