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Resolved Mac Pro with MacVidCards GTX 780 will not boot from 2nd OS drive

S

sunnyj

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 18, 2010
430
9
Vancouver, British Columbia
i have one ssd(optical bay 1) with mavericks and a second hhd(optical bay 2) with mountain lion installed in my mac pro. since i've installed macvidcards gtx 780 i cannot boot successfully from the second drive. on startup i hold option, select the mountain lion hd and press enter. after showing the apple logo with the spinning gear it gives me the grey screen of death. to troubleshoot i put back my old nvidia fx4800 and the computer booted up with the second hdd with no issues. i need to have a mountain lion boot disk because davinci resolve does not play well with mavericks. does anyone know how i can boot with the second drive and not get the grey screen of death?

EDIT: See post #20 and #21 for the fix.
 
Last edited:
I am no expert but which version of Mountain Lion do you have?

Have you installed the latest version of the NVidia Web Drivers for ML?

I would initially suspect a driver issue.

Can you also either boot in verbose to ML or just boot to Mavericks and access the System.log on the ML drive to see if gives a clue as to what part of the boot sequence it is failing at?
 
MacVidCards said:
Some people have issues with ML Web Driver

Don't use it
Click to expand...

costabunny said:
I am no expert but which version of Mountain Lion do you have?

Have you installed the latest version of the NVidia Web Drivers for ML?

I would initially suspect a driver issue.

Can you also either boot in verbose to ML or just boot to Mavericks and access the System.log on the ML drive to see if gives a clue as to what part of the boot sequence it is failing at?
Click to expand...

the mountain lion boot drive only has the cuda driver installed. no web driver. ill see what cuda driver is installed on ML and update if possible.
 
MacVidCards said:
780s work fine with standard OSX from 10.8.3-10.8.5

Some people have issue with Web Driver, I can't replicate with a variety of machines here
Click to expand...

the 780 works flawlessly when booting to the ssd... but it wont boot to any other os drive including a usb drive with the 780 installed. why can i boot from the second drive without issues when i put my fx4800 back in? otherwise i absolutely love this gpu!!!
 
sunnyj said:
the 780 works flawlessly when booting to the ssd... but it wont boot to any other os drive including a usb drive with the 780 installed. why can i boot from the second drive without issues when i put my fx4800 back in? otherwise i absolutely love this gpu!!!
Click to expand...

No idea.

Remove Web Driver.

Choose disk from System Preferences instead of EFI boot screen.

I have 3-6 different OS's available on test machines, never had an issue of any sort like this with 780.

Problem is on your end.
 
sunnyj said:
the 780 works flawlessly when booting to the ssd... but it wont boot to any other os drive including a usb drive with the 780 installed. why can i boot from the second drive without issues when i put my fx4800 back in? otherwise i absolutely love this gpu!!!
Click to expand...

If one os disk (ssd) works flawlessly then it does sound like a problem elsewhere. Could be drivers or some other startup process on the other drive/s that is causing the startup to fail.

Check the system.log or boot with verbose on and see what that tells you. Post the last chunk of the system.log from the drive that failed to boot /var/log/System.log and maybe it will shed some light.
 
sunnyj said:
the 780 works flawlessly when booting to the ssd... but it wont boot to any other os drive including a usb drive with the 780 installed. why can i boot from the second drive without issues when i put my fx4800 back in? otherwise i absolutely love this gpu!!!
Click to expand...

I had an issue when I originally installed the GTX 680 for Mac (EVGA version) on a Mac Pro that had a similar chain of events. Ended up reinstalling the OS on top of the existing and it fixed all issues with booting. Check this thread, may be helpful:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1602417/
 
MacVidCards said:
No idea.

Remove Web Driver.

Choose disk from System Preferences instead of EFI boot screen.

I have 3-6 different OS's available on test machines, never had an issue of any sort like this with 780.

Problem is on your end.
Click to expand...

costabunny said:
If one os disk (ssd) works flawlessly then it does sound like a problem elsewhere. Could be drivers or some other startup process on the other drive/s that is causing the startup to fail.

Check the system.log or boot with verbose on and see what that tells you. Post the last chunk of the system.log from the drive that failed to boot /var/log/System.log and maybe it will shed some light.
Click to expand...

bsbeamer said:
I had an issue when I originally installed the GTX 680 for Mac (EVGA version) on a Mac Pro that had a similar chain of events. Ended up reinstalling the OS on top of the existing and it fixed all issues with booting. Check this thread, may be helpful:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1602417/
Click to expand...

i removed the ssd and tried booting from the hhd and i still get the grey screen of death. i reinstalled mountain lion on the hdd and after installing, before i can even set up the OS i get the grey screen of death. what is truly puzzling for me is that when i put my old fx4800 back in i can boot with both the ssd and hdd. i ran verbose mode and the screenshot is below.

bootcachecontrol unable to open /var/db/bootcache.playlist 2 no such file or directory


 
can you boot into single user mode?

----------

If you can get into single user try this one;

Restart your Mac, hold ⌘ + S which’ll boot you into Single User Mode.
Run fsck -y to check the boot volume’s file system
Next run mount -uw / which mounts the boot volume
To fix the ACLs run chmod -R -N /Volumes
Type reboot

(might need an additional NVRam/PRam reset after this)

----------

just another thought occurs to me.

During all these sessions have you ever disconnected all the other drives appart from the HDD Boot?

just to isolate the issue perhaps disconnect all other HDD's and SSD's and see if that makes any difference?

only thinking that your sig suggests a well endowed Mac Pro. eliminate any possibility of other factors.
 
costabunny said:
can you boot into single user mode?

----------

If you can get into single user try this one;

Restart your Mac, hold ⌘ + S which’ll boot you into Single User Mode.
Run fsck -y to check the boot volume’s file system
Next run mount -uw / which mounts the boot volume
To fix the ACLs run chmod -R -N /Volumes
Type reboot

(might need an additional NVRam/PRam reset after this)

----------

just another thought occurs to me.

During all these sessions have you ever disconnected all the other drives appart from the HDD Boot?

just to isolate the issue perhaps disconnect all other HDD's and SSD's and see if that makes any difference?

only thinking that your sig suggests a well endowed Mac Pro. eliminate any possibility of other factors.
Click to expand...
i tried everything you suggested, including removing all the hard drives and pcie cards. after reseting the pram my computer is stuck in a startup loop.

if i install the nvidia quadro fx 4800 i can boot with both operating system drives. the booting issue is only occurring with the macvidcards gtx 780.
 
So it is really boiling down to card works fine in Mavericks but not in ML?

We would be happy to replace the card if this is the case.

I don't know of anyone else having issue except with Web Drivers. I would be interested to see the issue in person as well.
 
MacVidCards said:
So it is really boiling down to card works fine in Mavericks but not in ML?

We would be happy to replace the card if this is the case.

I don't know of anyone else having issue except with Web Drivers. I would be interested to see the issue in person as well.
Click to expand...

when i purchased the card i installed it and used it with mountain lion for about a week with no issues. since then i installed mavericks onto the ssd and i have no issues with the OS and the gpu. now i need to have one drive booting mavericks and another drive to boot mountain lion for resolve. bottom line is that with the nvidia fx4800 i can dual boot to both the ssd and hhd. with the gtx 780 i can only boot to the ssd with mavericks. im going to try installing mountain lion on anther hhd.
 
MacVidCards said:
So it is really boiling down to card works fine in Mavericks but not in ML?

We would be happy to replace the card if this is the case.

I don't know of anyone else having issue except with Web Drivers. I would be interested to see the issue in person as well.
Click to expand...

i tried installing ML onto another hhd and i still get the grey screen of death after the installing is complete and before the registration screen. this is becoming frustrating.
 
If it worked just fine in ML before but doesn't now, that seems to point to an unknown 3rd variable. Did you by chance up the clocks via reflash in Windows? There must be some other thing that changed.

Have you updated past 10.8.3? No sign of web drivers?
 
MacVidCards said:
If it worked just fine in ML before but doesn't now, that seems to point to an unknown 3rd variable. Did you by chance up the clocks via reflash in Windows? There must be some other thing that changed.

Have you updated past 10.8.3? No sign of web drivers?
Click to expand...

I have never installed Windows on my Mac pro and I don't even know how to modify the clock speeds. The only upgrade I have done since purchasing your gtx 780 is upgrade to Mavericks.

there's no way for me to update drivers because I can't get passed the Apple sign with a spinning gear.

I can install my old fx4800 and run any tests you want me to.
 
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