4,1 not booting properly - grey screen then macosutilities

[BubbaMc]

Hi all, I've got an annoying problem and hope you can help.

Recently, my Mac Pro has intermittently froze on a gray screen while booting. This is happening more and more. Sometimes the apple logo will come up, and the progress bar will almost reach the end, then it boots into macosutilities. In fact this is happening right now, and I can't get it to boot into the OS.

Have tried replacing the motherboard battery and restoring from time machine (which worked for a while). Then I left it overnight and the system was unresponsive. Restarting led into the gray screen again and won't boot.

Any ideas as to what I can try? Bootcamp is not installed. MacOS resides on the original 256GB SATA II drive.

 

[Synchro3]

Try this: Hold 'alt' button to option boot and select the system start volume. Once you are on the desktop, choose again in the control panel the right volume as start volume.

 

[crjackson2134]

Hi all, I've got an annoying problem and hope you can help.

Recently, my Mac Pro has intermittently froze on a gray screen while booting. This is happening more and more. Sometimes the apple logo will come up, and the progress bar will almost reach the end, then it boots into macosutilities. In fact this is happening right now, and I can't get it to boot into the OS.

Have tried replacing the motherboard battery and restoring from time machine (which worked for a while). Then I left it overnight and the system was unresponsive. Restarting led into the gray screen again and won't boot.

Any ideas as to what I can try? Bootcamp is not installed. MacOS resides on the original 256GB SATA II drive.

When it takes you to utilities, run the first aid/disk repair. It’s possible your original 256GB is failing or too full.

 

[bookemdano]

When you get the utilities screen that means your system booted from the recovery partition. I concur with crjackson2134 that you should check your disk for errors. The symptoms you describe sound like a disk/SSD that's failing. Could be other causes too of course, but you should make certain you're getting regular backups.

 

[handheldgames]

Whilst this may not apply in your case, on a cold boot in a 5,1 my Apple PCIe AHCI SSD- SSUBX, as well as @crjackson2134's behaves in this manner more than 50% of the time in when it's placed in PCIE slot #3 or #4.

When installed in a 4,1 flashed to a 5,1, it does not have this issue.

 

[crjackson2134]

Whilst this may not apply in your case, on a cold boot in a 5,1 my Apple PCIe AHCI SSD- SSUBX, as well as @crjackson2134's behaves in this manner more than 50% of the time in when it's placed in PCIE slot #3 or #4.

When installed in a 4,1 flashed to a 5,1, it does not have this issue.

Mine never fails to boot directly into the OS. It does have a long boot delay when installed in slots 3/4 it takes a full minute sometimes, but usually it’s exactly 49 Seconds. I’m used to it finally.

It never hangs or becomes unresponsive unless I start experimenting. And has never booted into recovery mode unexpectedly.

Given he’s on a 4,1 on the original spinning rust, I assume it’s mounted in a SATA bay, so I suspect a corrupted or failing HDD. Of course I may be ASSuming too much here