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Mac Pro wouldn't wake, now boots to question folder, boots fine in target disk mode

R

rogo22

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 21, 2015
5
0
I have a 1,1 Mac Pro that is stock with 6gb ram. I installed Mavericks on it and was running for a couple days just fine. Installed a ati 5780 and again ran just fine for a couple of days. Then one day it just wouldn't wake up. I could tell it was doing something, as the TV would stop displaying "no signal" but it would still be black. I removed the 5870 and put the original video card in so I could get boot screens. It was just booting to a flashing folder.

From what I read, it means it can't find the startup disk. I boot with option key, and select the harddrive (shows the system partition and the recovery) but then it just boots to a grey screen.

I tried resetting PRAM/NVRAM, leaving everything unplugged to reset SMC, and starting in safe mode, and nothing works. I hold shift and I just get grey screen, no folder. If I hold shift after selecting the drive from the option-key menu, I just get a grey screen as well.

The other stuff I read indicated the drive might be bad, so I boot the mac pro in target disk mode, and booted from that on my macbook pro. It seemed like forever, but eventually got to a screen saying installing os x, once it went through everything, it booted to my desktop, and everything was normal. It even brought up chrome and the youtube video playlist I left off on. Settings, data, everything is fine on the drive. Not sure why it was installing os x or what that was about, but it's definitely bootable.

So, any idea what I can check next? I just bought RAM, processors, and this graphics card to update it, so I'm hoping its not a hardware failure that costs too much to fix.
 
rogo22 said:
I have a 1,1 Mac Pro that is stock with 6gb ram. I installed Mavericks on it and was running for a couple days just fine. Installed a ati 5780 and again ran just fine for a couple of days. Then one day it just wouldn't wake up. I could tell it was doing something, as the TV would stop displaying "no signal" but it would still be black. I removed the 5870 and put the original video card in so I could get boot screens. It was just booting to a flashing folder.

From what I read, it means it can't find the startup disk. I boot with option key, and select the harddrive (shows the system partition and the recovery) but then it just boots to a grey screen.

I tried resetting PRAM/NVRAM, leaving everything unplugged to reset SMC, and starting in safe mode, and nothing works. I hold shift and I just get grey screen, no folder. If I hold shift after selecting the drive from the option-key menu, I just get a grey screen as well.

The other stuff I read indicated the drive might be bad, so I boot the mac pro in target disk mode, and booted from that on my macbook pro. It seemed like forever, but eventually got to a screen saying installing os x, once it went through everything, it booted to my desktop, and everything was normal. It even brought up chrome and the youtube video playlist I left off on. Settings, data, everything is fine on the drive. Not sure why it was installing os x or what that was about, but it's definitely bootable.

So, any idea what I can check next? I just bought RAM, processors, and this graphics card to update it, so I'm hoping its not a hardware failure that costs too much to fix.
Click to expand...
When you have a good working system, clone it with CCC.

I don't know what if any rules there are with booting Mavericks on 32-bit. Also I guess Yosemite now - not that you are - but access to and use of Option key and Recovery changed with changes to the file system.

The XP941 is one of the easiest though not cheapest SSD device that boots any classic Mac Pro. Add Lycom adapter. Also, $23 2x2GB FBDIMMs new from NEMIX on Amazon. I would definitely want an SSD even $68 128GB EVO 850 Samsung (Icy Dock on Amazon also that fits 2006 model).

If you have not, get to know http://www.bombich.com
 
The hard drive is fine, I can boot it up using my macbook, it just had that weird thing about installing OS X again, even though when it was 'done', nothing had changed. It was exactly as if I booted it up with the Pro.

An SSD was on the list eventually, I didn't know they were that cheap though, I bought a 1TB WD to replace the original drive from 06 that just died last year. It's been sitting around the office for a while and I figured I'd try to upgrade it to be useful.

What could be causing the issue between the system not finding the startup drive? (again, it shows when I hold option, so it knows it's there. But then directly selecting that just boots to grey, so I don't know what any of that means)
 
Option or is it Command + the v key held down when it boots up then at least you will see where it is failing when the boot messages scroll by then stop at the failure point.
 
I'll give that try, thanks. I was trying the safe mode which wasn't getting me anywhere.
 
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