MP 1,1-5,1 5,1 Boots to Black Screen/No Chime

[Auggie]

I went to boot my 2012 MP Server into Windows 10 via Paragon control panel from Mojave, as I've done many times before, but this time when it booted it just goes into a black screen with no boot chime.

I tried zapping PRAM but never goes through the process, I pulled all drives, all non-GPU PCI cards, and all USB devices except Apple aluminum keyboard, I swapped a GT120 in place of the 280X, tried a different Apple Cinema Display, and even pulled all RAM (which only results in flashing power LED) but nothing changes the black screen with no boot chime.

GPU and PSU fans spin at normal speeds (not max'ed out).

I've experienced this one other time before long ago but don't recall the recovery procedures.

I don't believe there is a hardware issue; it's just something stuck due to setting the startup to boot to Windows via a third party app.

So I'm stumped and seeking guidance...

 

[Macschrauber]

Try a deep nvram reset by doing it 3 times in a row.

 

[geoffs999]

I had a very similar issue with my Mid 2012 Mac Pro.

Press power button and it booted to black screen in both Mac and BootCamp. I pulled the side door off and noted that the fans on the GTX 1070 were not spinning. I thought the card had died so I ordered a GTX 1080 from MacVidCards.

It arrived and I fitted it and had the same problem so obviously not the video card. On initial boot the fans on the card worked but stopped spinning just as the Mac chimed at startup. It would continue to boot and you could hear the drives chattering and so on but still no video on my Dell 31.5" display. Tried it with my Apple 24" display and had same result.

I took the Mac to my local Mac Dealer MacWorx who called me in the afternoon and said it was fixed and that they had booted into Windows and Mac five times. Got it home, hooked it all up and same problem.

Surfed the Net for ages looking for a solution and found an obscure article suggesting it was the Mac Pro's PRAM battery that was the problem - not enough charge to fully power the Mac. We had been away in Europe for five and as half weeks and the Mac had not been turned on.

The small Energiser 2032 circular battery is located behind the video card in the Mac Pro. Remove the Video card and any other PCI-e cards so you can get to it easily. Be very careful not to break the clip holding it in. Do not pull on the clip to release the battery. You need to lift the right hand edge of the battery and slide it out sideways to the right. Then push the new one in the opposite way.

I then zapped the PRAM (Command, Option, P + R at startup) and the Mac Pro booted and the screen came back to life. The fans on the GTX 1080 are still spinning and the Mac is working in both BootCamp and MacOS.

Just might be worth a try to address your problem.

Mac Pro 4.1, 5.1, 2 x iPad Pro, iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, 2018 MacBook Pro plus whole Apple ecosystem.

 

[Auggie]

Try a deep nvram reset by doing it 3 times in a row.

I'm not familiar with this process: you mean try resetting PRAM three times in a row? How long do I waiting holding the keys each time?

Surfed the Net for ages looking for a solution and found an obscure article suggesting it was the Mac Pro's PRAM battery that was the problem - not enough charge to fully power the Mac. We had been away in Europe for five and as half weeks and the Mac had not been turned on.

Hmm, easily worth a shot since I have a whole card of 32's when I replaced the batteries on other computers; just gotta find where I stashed them. And makes the most sense as our 5,1's are seven years old by now.

 

[Auggie]

Well, I tried both techniques:

1) Replaced with new Sony CR2032 battery with no effect

2) Tried PRAM reset three times in a row; first holding keys for a minute each time, no-go, then holding only several seconds between forced power off's. No effect.

All fans run continously until powered off; I left it to run all day yesterday through the night and this morning all fans were still running.

So I've scheduled a Genius Bar appointment this evening. Worst case is that the PRAM is FUBAR'd which may necessitate backplane board swap.

 

[Itconnects]

I’m getting the black screen at installation too after restart after windows logo. Just mouse. Any ideas?

 

[Auggie]

I’m getting the black screen at installation too after restart after windows logo. Just mouse. Any ideas?

When you say "at installation," are you saying that you get some sort of screen initial upon boot, then it goes to black? And that you see and move the mouse cursor? Or did you mean it now always boots to black screen no matter what?

For my situation, it always boots to black with chime and no cursor. I ultimately had Apple Genius Bar replace the main board as they, too, could not get it to boot past the black screen.

 

[Itconnects]

When you say "at installation," are you saying that you get some sort of screen initial upon boot, then it goes to black? And that you see and move the mouse cursor? Or did you mean it now always boots to black screen no matter what?

For my situation, it always boots to black with chime and no cursor. I ultimately had Apple Genius Bar replace the main board as they, too, could not get it to boot past the black screen.

My Mojave boots just fine. My windows doesn’t boot. Well it does but after the windows screen it just boots into a black screen where I can occasionally see my cursor when I move the mouse. After 2 hours it gives me a logonui.exe error. It never boots into the desk top.

 

[Auggie]

My Mojave boots just fine. My windows doesn’t boot. Well it does but after the windows screen it just boots into a black screen where I can occasionally see my cursor when I move the mouse. After 2 hours it gives me a logonui.exe error. It never boots into the desk top.

Did you install Windows to boot via EFI or BIOS? If EFI, there is a problem with OS X recognizing which Windows partition to actually boot from, and if you select the wrong one, get stuck in a black screen. I switched to BIOS because of that issue, along with the issues reported by tsialex regarding Windows somehow adding data to the Mac Pro's FW which could lead to corruption and a "bricked" mainboard.

 

[Itconnects]

Did you install Windows to boot via EFI or BIOS? If EFI, there is a problem with OS X recognizing which Windows partition to actually boot from, and if you select the wrong one, get stuck in a black screen. I switched to BIOS because of that issue, along with the issues reported by tsialex regarding Windows somehow adding data to the Mac Pro's FW which could lead to corruption and a "bricked" mainboard.

What's a bricked main board? Im confused what EFI or BIOS is.

Here's what I did.

I Put a 1 TB HDD in drive bay 1. Disk utility to format the drive to MBR FAT32. Then I burned my Windows 10 ISO 1909 by right clicking burn on mac os. After My burn I shut off bluetooth, shut off the wifi, and shut down the computer. Whilst shut down, I removed my SSD Mac OS Mojave boot drive. Now just the optical bay is running the DVD and the HDD in bay1. I boot into the DVD install it (without a key) I choose custom mode because its a new install. I install windows 10 Pro. I get to the point where I have to choose a disk. The only disk is my HDD. I click format. Im guessing format turns it to NTFS. Installation beings and hits 100% When the green status bar is at 75% of the way it says it needs to restart to complete the installation. A countdown begins. Once it ends. The computer restarts and boots back into windows. I see the windows Blue window logo, spinning dots at the bottom like its loading. Then the window goes away, and its just the spinning dot loading thing, then the blue windows come back, flicker, and then gone. Im left with black screen where the logo was, I can still see my cursor when I move my mouse, and nothing happens. I left it on for 2 hours today, came back. Nothing happened. This is how far I've gotten with this set-up. I thought it could be my EVGA GTX 680, but now im doubting it because its working well on my mac os...

Its so frustrating because I can't boot into safe mode. I don't know how to edit drivers, I don't know how to check what could be causing it....

One time i left it on overnight on the black screen. in the morning I got a Logonui.exe

 

[Itconnects]

another thing when I hold ALT during one of the many restarts. I see a WINDOWS HDD, WINDOWS CD, EFI BOOT CD. I don't really understand what's what. I just boot into the windows HDD

also system integrity is disabled

 

[Auggie]

What's a bricked main board?

"Bricked" means the main logic board aka backplane board, which contains the firmware chip, becomes corrupted beyond recovery where it prevents the computer from booting successfully and must be physically replaced. Essentially, the main board is as functional as a brick.

Im confused what EFI or BIOS is.

I think you need to do some Google research...

Differences Between UEFI and BIOS

Here's what I did.
...
I boot into the DVD install it
...

Installing Windows via DVD usually sets it up to boot BIOS

I get to the point where I have to choose a disk. The only disk is my HDD. I click format. Im guessing format turns it to NTFS.

I'm assuming you physically selected the largest partition to format and install Windows on. There would be several partitions IIRC: two small partitions (which contain the Windows boot loading code) and a third, larger partition approximately the size of the destination volume (i.e. 1 TB).

Selecting the wrong partition will prevent Windows from booting correctly.

If you've selected the correct partition, then it's difficult for me to troubleshoot the situation further without actively watching all your steps and seeing the screen outputs, and thus can't provide any further insight. Hopefully someone else can chime in here.

If you are completely stumped and can't figure it out with no further suggestions from anyone, I recommend you start over by wiping the destination drive, then video recording your screen starting when you first startup with the Windows install DVD.

 

[Itconnects]

"Bricked" means the main logic board aka backplane board, which contains the firmware chip, becomes corrupted beyond recovery where it prevents the computer from booting successfully and must be physically replaced. Essentially, the main board is as functional as a brick.



I think you need to do some Google research...

Differences Between UEFI and BIOS



Installing Windows via DVD usually sets it up to boot BIOS



I'm assuming you physically selected the largest partition to format and install Windows on. There would be several partitions IIRC: two small partitions (which contain the Windows boot loading code) and a third, larger partition approximately the size of the destination volume (i.e. 1 TB).

Selecting the wrong partition will prevent Windows from booting correctly.

If you've selected the correct partition, then it's difficult for me to troubleshoot the situation further without actively watching all your steps and seeing the screen outputs, and thus can't provide any further insight. Hopefully someone else can chime in here.

If you are completely stumped and can't figure it out with no further suggestions from anyone, I recommend you start over by wiping the destination drive, then video recording your screen starting when you first startup with the Windows install DVD.

I have one dedicated drive for windows. I did not partition it. I just formatted it on the MACOS side, and then hit format at install on the windows side. I only see one drive with 1tb of space. The steps I took are exactly what I did. I don't get where you're getting multiple partitions from what i said.
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Why would a partition contain anything of windows in it since its just been wiped and formatted to MBR FAT 32. It has nothing on it. Just a single HDD that shows up on the windows side at installation
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All Im trying to do is install windows 10 on this computer to use it on occasion and to use titan ridge for thunderbolt 3 stuff. I've read everywhere that I am suppose to create an Iso DVD and format the target drive to MBR FAT32. Do I even need to use MBR?

 

[Itconnects]

If you are completely stumped and can't figure it out with no further suggestions from anyone, I recommend you start over by wiping the destination drive, then video recording your screen starting when you first startup with the Windows install DVD.

Here’s a video of it

 

[Auggie]

It's been many years since I created my stand-alone dual-boot Windows 7/Windows XP drive, and now my Windows 10 dedicated drive on my Mac Pro and I'm no where near the expert in Windows now (lots of knowledge has faded away due to non-use), but I believe the issue may be due to no GPT boot partition available for the Mac Pro to store and load the necessary boot code to properly boot Windows. Hence, you can get the install to start, but after it reboots as part of the install, it gets stuck.

I can only suggest that you reinstall the Mojave SSD then start the Windows install again from the beginning.

There's a Windows thread in this forum that you could also seek advice from.

 

[Itconnects]

It's been many years since I created my stand-alone dual-boot Windows 7/Windows XP drive, and now my Windows 10 dedicated drive on my Mac Pro and I'm no where near the expert in Windows now (lots of knowledge has faded away due to non-use), but I believe the issue may be due to no GPT boot partition available for the Mac Pro to store and load the necessary boot code to properly boot Windows. Hence, you can get the install to start, but after it reboots as part of the install, it gets stuck.

I can only suggest that you reinstall the Mojave SSD then start the Windows install again from the beginning.

There's a Windows thread in this forum that you could also seek advice from.

I installed 8.1 perfectly though. Now I’m trying to figure out the best way to get to 10 without the same issues. Gtp is for EFI. I think the way I’m installing requires MBR. How do I get to that section of the forum?

 

[Auggie]

Gtp is for EFI. I think the way I’m installing requires MBR.

NO, I did not say to format the Windows partition in GPT, only that OS X needs to read boot code in order to read the Windows install drive and that should be on a GPT partition, which would be made available if you installed the Mojave hard drive. By formatting the whole Windows destination drive in FAT32 and MBR, no GPT partition was made for the boot code to be stored.

Again, this is all fuzzy stuff to me now as it's been awhile. I think you need to do a search of the forums for the Windows install thread...