Mac Pro 1,1 will not boot from dvd / cd or boot menu

[dfroshie]

Hi all,

Long time Mac user but never ran across this issue before. I have a mac pro 2006. When I got it a year ago it had Leopard on it working great. I then put windows 7 on it without boot camp just using the drivers needed. I installed that on another drive.

Worked swimmingly until I deleted the mac partitions completely and now I can not boot form my Leopard dvd to re install mac os. When I put the Leopard dvd in and hold down C, I hear the dvd drive accessing, but the screen just stays black....I never get the grey screen to even choose the boot cd or windows partition.

I do remember once I did the method of holding the control key down to stick the drive I wanted so it booted automatically within the mac boot menu.

Now I'm stuck. It boots to windows fine, but never shows me the mac boot / chooser menu at all. I've done all the nvram, pram, resets and that doesnt work. Its like the mac boot loader is gone....

Please help.

 

[sboerup]

This might sound silly (no offense) but are you sure you have the right DVD in the tray? When holding the C key doesn't work, I will hold down the option(alt) and then it will bring up all available bootable discs (sometimes there is a delay with the optical drive showing up though). This has always worked for me.

 

[dknightd]

My guess, only a guess, is that your optical drive is bad. Do you have another osx disk you can boot from?

 

[dfroshie]

This might sound silly (no offense) but are you sure you have the right DVD in the tray? When holding the C key doesn't work, I will hold down the option(alt) and then it will bring up all available bootable discs (sometimes there is a delay with the optical drive showing up though). This has always worked for me.

Yes, I put a Leopard 10.6.3 dvd trying both dvd trays and I hear them spin, but see nothing. The DVD trays do work in win 7 perfectly.

 

[dfroshie]

My guess, only a guess, is that your optical drive is bad. Do you have another osx disk you can boot from?

The DVD trays do work in win 7 perfectly so I'm thinking the trays are fine.

 

[sirnh]

The DVD trays do work in win 7 perfectly so I'm thinking the trays are fine.

The snow leopard 10.6.3 disc... is it a boxed version or is it a restore disc from another machine? You should try the OS restore disc that came with your mac and see if it boots with that. If it's a boxed install disc, you may be able to contact apple for a replacement.

 

[dfroshie]

The snow leopard 10.6.3 disc... is it a boxed version or is it a restore disc from another machine? You should try the OS restore disc that came with your mac and see if it boots with that. If it's a boxed install disc, you may be able to contact apple for a replacement.

The disk was a boxed version I bought a best buy. I tried the OS disk that came with the mac and it wont boot either. The crazy thing is though is I think its booting....but it just doesnt turn on the screen. But when I let it boot into windows 7, the screens come on fine.

 

[H0M3R]

What about holding down the option key when rebooting? I seem to recall doing that and it gave me menu with a CD icon to boot from.

 

[dfroshie]

What about holding down the option key when rebooting? I seem to recall doing that and it gave me menu with a CD icon to boot from.

yea, standard procedure right....I know and very frustrating not seeing that boot menu. It just wont come up...the screen stays black and just sits there.

 

[dknightd]

Is one of your dvd drives the original? It used to be Macs had some special juju in their drives that would let them boot a Mac. Not sure if that is true any more.

Maybe you made yourself a hacinPC

 

[dfroshie]

Is one of your dvd drives the original? It used to be Macs had some special juju in their drives that would let them boot a Mac. Not sure if that is true any more.

Maybe you made yourself a hacinPC

Man I cant believe this. How do you delete the MAC EFI boot rom??? Yea the drives are original mac drives/dvd.

Why would it boot into windows by itself and not let me boot from an OSX dvd?

 

[666sheep]

Remove HDD, start with SL Install disc only. If it will boot this way, set Startup Disk to DVD and put HDD back.

 

[macz1]

Perhaps you have a new graphics card and the system version on the DVD does not include the drivers... Do you have the stock GPU installed or a recent one?