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Mac Pro won't fully boot

ActionableMango said:
Based on the age of the computer, you might try replacing the internal battery too. Lithium batteries have a 10-year shelf life and your computer is 10 years old. But I think that's a long shot.
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OP, you could also remove for a while the battery and put it in again, sometimes it helps.

Gothboy1 said:
I had the idea of using an old SATA drive I had to reformat and then install an OS to make it a boot drive but when I tried to boot computer it made a slow deliberate Beep....beep.....beep
Click to expand...

Could this be a RAM problem? maybe not because it goes up to the gray screen, and if it was a real RAM problem there wouldn't be any boot sequence, but can you give it a try and remove some sticks, perhaps the odd one? shouldn't you have an even number of ram? 13 gb? isn't it necessary for these modules to be installed in pairs and same capacity?
try installing them in pairs...

you can also check this:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/Mac_Pro_FBdimm_Pairing.html
 
h9826790 said:
There is no copy of installer in the recovery partition. So, the user MUST have already get / buy the installer from App Store. Otherwise, even with internet connection, the associated Apple ID still cannot download the OSX installer for the next step.
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Good to know. Thankfully he says he's bought it on the App Store.
 
filmak said:
OP, you could also remove for a while the battery and put it in again, sometimes it helps.
Click to expand...

I replaced the battery way back in the beginning of this thread.



filmak said:
Could this be a RAM problem? maybe not because it goes up to the gray screen, and if it was a real RAM problem there wouldn't be any boot sequence, but can you give it a try and remove some sticks, perhaps the odd one? shouldn't you have an even number of ram? 13 gb? isn't it necessary for these modules to be installed in pairs and same capacity?
try installing them in pairs...

you can also check this:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/Mac_Pro_FBdimm_Pairing.html
Click to expand...

I tested with RAM pairings already. The 13th is made up of a 512+512 pair.
[doublepost=1469623317][/doublepost]
h9826790 said:
There is no copy of installer in the recovery partition. So, the user MUST have already get / buy the installer from App Store. Otherwise, even with internet connection, the associated Apple ID still cannot download the OSX installer for the next step.
Click to expand...

I DID buy Lion from the App store however it was 2 years ago and it's no longer in my account for download. I contacted Apple to see if I can get back this download don't know why it's no longer there.
 
Gothboy1 said:
I replaced the battery way back in the beginning of this thread.





I tested with RAM pairings already. The 13th is made up of a 512+512 pair.
[doublepost=1469623317][/doublepost]

I DID buy Lion from the App store however it was 2 years ago and it's no longer in my account for download. I contacted Apple to see if I can get back this download don't know why it's no longer there.
Click to expand...

Is it possible to try to boot from an external usb/fw drive?
Also can you try to check the internal SATA connectors for any damage?
 
filmak said:
I DID buy Lion from the App store however it was 2 years ago and it's no longer in my account for download. I contacted Apple to see if I can get back this download don't know why it's no longer there.
Click to expand...

Once you buy it, it should be always avail online. You mean you can't find it in App Store now? Or you can't install the OX via recovery partition?
 
Gothboy1 said:
I DID buy Lion from the App store however it was 2 years ago and it's no longer in my account for download. I contacted Apple to see if I can get back this download don't know why it's no longer there.
Click to expand...
Are you using another Mac to try and download the Lion installer? You should be able download anything you purchased from the App Store. I'm not I front of my Mac so can't give the exact steps but look for something that shows your history of purchases.
 
So I figuered out the Lion download and it installed fine on the new drive it restarted and....would not fully boot the computer. Same issue, grey screen.....all that work no joy.

A computer geek friend at work suggested it has something to do with the "boot loader" and that it has been corrupted and fixing this involves going in the terminal and typing code. I'm getting a bit distraught can anyone weigh in you've all been most helpful.
 
Gothboy1 said:
So I figuered out the Lion download and it installed fine on the new drive it restarted and....would not fully boot the computer. Same issue, grey screen.....all that work no joy.

A computer geek friend at work suggested it has something to do with the "boot loader" and that it has been corrupted and fixing this involves going in the terminal and typing code. I'm getting a bit distraught can anyone weigh in you've all been most helpful.
Click to expand...
Is it possible to try to install a supported OS X version on an external drive (usb/fw or whatever) and boot from this one, or take a copy from another mac, just to check if there is a motherboard or internal SATA bus problem.
 
I suppose so I guess I could take an old drive and put it in my backup drive firewire enclosure and try that? It only uses PATA drives though. Will that even work with OS10?
 
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Gothboy1 said:
A computer geek friend at work suggested it has something to do with the "boot loader" and that it has been corrupted and fixing this involves going in the terminal and typing code.
Click to expand...

Technically, the early boot process is detailed within Apple's Kernel Programming Guide.

Your friend is probably unaware of preferred approaches (not involving any terminal) to dealing with such issues on Macs.
 
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Gothboy1 said:
A computer geek friend at work suggested it has something to do with the "boot loader" and that it has been corrupted and fixing this involves going in the terminal and typing code.
Click to expand...

The MAC has four "areas" related to booting:
  • The boot ROM, which cannot be changed.
  • The EFI Bootloader, which theoretically can be changed, but is not meant to ever be changed. So you can't do anything safely with this. If this is corrupt, I cannot think of a way to restore it.
  • The optional boot parameters in NVRAM. These can be reset to their defaults by holding CMD-OPTION-P-R after powering on. Go ahead and try this. If you do it right, the Mac should reboot and you should hear a second boot chime. That will verify that the NVRAM has reset.
  • Boot code installed on the hard drive, which cannot be the problem since you did a fresh install.
If the NVRAM reset doesn't work, I believe you have a hardware failure. The fresh install rules out any software you've installed, configuration changes you've made, and corrupted data. The NVRAM reset will ensure that the problem is not a configuration setting or corruption stored in NVRAM.
 
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I installed Lion on an older PATA drive in an external enclosure and it's the same problem will not click and finish the boot. Apple screen appears then dark screen then spinning ball on top of dark screen. I will try the NVRAM
[doublepost=1470097536][/doublepost]Tried the CMD-OPTION-P-R after powering on held until 2nd chime Apple logo>Grey scree. and spinning ball.....what hardware problem could this possibly be? A little backstory:a year ago I noticed some issues with rebooting to another drive in system preferences. I get this dddddddd-rrrrrrrrrr noise repeat and I'd have to use the power button to restart the computer since it was stuck in the process of switching to the other drive.
 
If NVRAM reset doesn't work, the next steps are eliminating all removable hardware one by one. Earlier in the thread it sounds like you removed all cards except the graphics card, and all drives except one. So what's left to try is memory and the graphics card itself.

Pull half the memory and try to boot up. If it still won't boot, pull the other half out and put the first half back in to try again.

The graphics card will be trickier. What we want to do is pull the card and see if the MP successfully boots without it. Do you happen to have Screen Sharing enabled? (Or anything similar, such as VNC, Jump Desktop, gotomypc.com, etc.) If so, pull the graphics card out and see through screen sharing if it successfully boots up. If you don't have that set up already, pull the card anyway and give it a few minutes to boot up. If you had file sharing or printer sharing set up, then use another computer to try to access the file share or add the shared printer. If you have none of that set up, then try to ping your MP from another computer on the network.
 
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Gothboy1 said:
So I figuered out the Lion download and it installed fine on the new drive it restarted and....would not fully boot the computer. Same issue, grey screen.....all that work no joy.

A computer geek friend at work suggested it has something to do with the "boot loader" and that it has been corrupted and fixing this involves going in the terminal and typing code. I'm getting a bit distraught can anyone weigh in you've all been most helpful.
Click to expand...
Since you're able to boot to the OS X installer and install the operating system (as well as run Disk Utility to check the status of the drives) this suggests the basic functionality of the system is OK. It sounds as if a driver for something is attempting to load and is unable to do so blocking the boot process.

As has been suggested remove any components which are not completely essential to booting the computer. You mentioned a number of additional cards. Remove them along with all of the hard drives except for the drive with the newly installed OS. The memory recommendation is an excellent idea if the removal of all the other components fails to result in a system that boots.
 
ActionableMango said:
What we want to do is pull the card and see if the MP successfully boots without it.
Click to expand...

I'm unclear on how to startup without a graphics card and a monitor plugged in?

Screen share? I guess so because I use 2 monitors with the dual-port Graphics card.
 
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If ssh service was enabled before problems began: you can (I guess) allow enough time for a headless boot and then, from a different device on the same LAN, attempt a terminal connection to the Mac.
 
Gothboy1 said:
I'm unclear on how to startup without a graphics card and a monitor plugged in?

Screen share? I guess so because I use 2 monitors with the dual-port Graphics card.
Click to expand...

The point is to test to see if the computer will boot up without that graphics card in there, in case it is the problem. Best would be to swap for another Mac graphics card and see if it boots up.

If you don't have another Mac graphics card, then the next best is to pull it out and turn on the computer with no graphics card at all. However, without any video we don't know if it successfully booted up or not, which is why screen sharing would be nice.

Screen Sharing is remote access to your desktop from another computer. It is software that has to be set up ahead of time. Since you don't have it set up ahead of time, you can't do it.

Best we can do without another video card and without screen sharing is to boot it up without a video card and then ping the computer from another computer. But this is getting really complicated and it's probably time to take it into a shop. You'll need another computer on the same LAN, you'll need to know your computer's IP address, etc etc.
 
Upstairs we have an Hp Pavilion 550-a114 running Windows 10 Home AMD A8-6410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 graphics card 2.00 GHZ. It's on the same home wireless network would that work?

You really think it's the graphics card? I heard that they either work or they don't display anything.
 
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Gothboy1 said:
Upstairs we have an Hp Pavilion 550-a114 running Windows 10 Home AMD A8-6410 APU with AMD Radeon R5 graphics card 2.00 GHZ. It's on the same home wireless network would that work?

You really think it's the graphics card? I heard that they either work or they don't display anything.
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I don't know what it is. I'm just walking through the process of elimination for every removable piece of hardware so that we can narrow it down to the smallest group possible. We have eliminated software, all of your other cards, and the hard drives as being the problem. The graphics card and memory are the few items left.

It should work but you're going to need to determine your computer's IP address before you can ping it. Check your router's web pages for connected devices and figure out what IP address your Mac has.

The memory would be easier, you might as well do that first.
 
I found this video card from an older Hewlett Packard PC I don't know what it is but maybe I can try it? There are 3 main cardd inserts but those 3 are the same size as the GeForce 2nd which is large. Would it hurt anything in the Macs' large slot?
 

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Gothboy1 said:
I found this video card from an older Hewlett Packard PC I don't know what it is but maybe I can try it? There are 3 main cardd inserts but those 3 are the same size as the GeForce 2nd which is large. Would it hurt anything in the Macs' large slot?
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It's unlikely to work. Since you're troubleshooting it's best to use a known / compatible card. Unfortunately for this vintage Mac it will be challenging to find one unless you're willing to buy. Though they're not very expensive if you purchase a low end one. Might want to check Ebay if you're willing to invest any more money. Other than that perhaps you can find a seller on Craigs List who is selling a 1,1 and see if they'd be cool letting you try their card to troubleshoot.
 
A friend lent me a PNY Geforce GTX 650 PCI express 3.0 2048MB GDDR5 card all I get is a black screen from this. It's either dead or not compatible....probably not dead the fan is working good and loud too.
 
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