My Mac Pro just died, won't start up completely

[Maury]

I was starting up a game when things went wonky, with the sound stuttering, screen black, etc. I couldn't quit, soft shutdown didn't work, etc. I did a hard shutdown with the power button on the front of the machine.

When I restarted, the Apple logo comes up and the spinner appears. After a lengthy time, perhaps 30 seconds, the spinner freezes.

So after a couple of retries, I tried a safe boot. Apple's instructions are to hold down the shift key after the startup chime sounds. My machine does not make the startup chime. So I simply held it down after about 1 second. In this case a sort of progress indicator appears, makes it about half way, and then exits back to the spinner. The spinner then freezes as before.

Apple says the words "safe mode" should appear. They do not.

Any ideas?

Maury

 

[slughead]

Sounds like your hard drive crashed.

Boot off the software install disk that came with your mac and open up "disk utility." See if you can run a first-aid or something.

Alternatively, if you have another mac with firewire, connect the two and boot the Mac Pro while holding down "T"

 

[Maury]

It's the video card. Must have overheated during the last gaming run. After cooling off a bit the machine started fine, but then the screen crashed about 2 minutes later.

This is the third card I've gone through. Apple needs to speed up the fans in the card bay, this is nuts.

Well, I guess I'm buying/flashing a 4870!

Maury