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New mac pro broken ? Tell me its not !

R

Ramonesmania

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 8, 2009
26
0
Dublin, Ireland
I have an 08 mac pro I bought 4 weeks ago.

I shut it down today, and when I tried to turn it back on, blank screen ! So, I got it to boot once in safe mode but it was completely random and just gave me a few more black screens. I tried another display and nothing.

So i booted from the DVD and reinstalled the OS through the 'archive and install' method. All was working fine until I decided to restart to see if my issues were resolved.

Now, when I turn it on, I get to the apple logo (although it has stopped giving me the startup sound) and a progress bar begins loading, and stops about 3 or 4 notches from the end. The mac thinks a bit and makes some noise, but nothing happens, it stays like that.

Please someone tell me there's a quick fix for this and it's a common issue !

The only thing I can think of is that the graphics card is dead, since it's the one I got with it and I believe it's not very good, especially since I've probably been pushing it with some games, but if that was the issue, nothing would show on my screen would it ?

Can anyone please help me out ? I really appreciate any replies.

Thanks, karl.
 
What version of OS X are you running? Also, safe mode? Are you running windows on it? I've never heard of safe mode for OS X.
 
OSX 10.5.7, the latest one anyway.

On mac, if you hold shift when you hear the startup sound it will start in safe mode.

I've got windows installed on another HD in the system but I'm not booting into it.
 
Tower-Union said:
What version of OS X are you running? Also, safe mode? Are you running windows on it? I've never heard of safe mode for OS X.
Click to expand...

I suspect he means verbose mode lol

It might be a graphics card issue, or a logic board possibly :s A graphic cards problem doesnt necessarily mean blank screen.. It can be sporadic performance, or squiffy colours etc.

Im not too sure how you can solve your crisis, go through the normal channels of deduction..

Good Luck
PTP
 
stick the drive in the second enclosure, and then install a new HDD with Leopard on it, boot from said drive, and then copy over everything that you need :)

If the drive is not working correctly you can use disk utility to check/repair permissions, and also the disk itself (if the catalog file, and file system itself is corrupted) this should iron out any issues.

PTP
 
the drive is clearly dying. you should get a new HDD in there and do what babyjennifer said. don't mess around trying to repair it, not now anyway. and if you don't have a backup drive, at least for time machine, buy two!
 
bozz2006 said:
the drive is clearly dying. you should get a new HDD in there and do what babyjennifer said. don't mess around trying to repair it, not now anyway. and if you don't have a backup drive, at least for time machine, buy two!
Click to expand...

On second thoughts do what this guy said!! :D
 
Ok hopefully its as simple as that and now i have an excuse to buy a new hard drive. But theres 2 scenarios here.

1 - buy a new hd, install leopard, mount the failing hd and transfer the files over. Is there an easy method of doing this like migration assistant or something ?

2 - Go with a single hard drive set up for now. Ive got a 500 gb hd in bay 2 with windows on it, but the most ill ever use is 100gb since i only use it for games. Could i pop that into bay 1, put in the leopard dvd and install leopard and givs it its own partition somehow ? This would be an ideal temporary set up since id like a new gpu or more ram instead of a new hd when i have one i barely use.
 
scenario 1:-The easy method would be migration assistant yes, and just choose the volume your migrating from.

scenario 2:- You would have to use disk utility and resize the partition of the windoze side which might wipe the drive, i know that in mac OSX you can resize secondary drives (i.e not boot volumes) but im not too sure about boot volumes themselves. If you have to wipe that drive you will have to start windows from scratch as well! which could end up being a pain in the butt!!

In theory your second idea would work, you would have calculate personally how much effort it would require to reinstall windows and bootcamp and stuff. But once you have decided its essentially the same idea as the first method yes.

PTP
 
MWPulse is right. You could end up in bigger trouble using that Windows disk. It may not be set up with GUID partition table which will disable Bootcamping on that HDD. Next point is you will not be able to fit OS X on that drive and keep your Windows unless you have a backup of that installation which I undertand you don't. You can make do with temporarily borrowing a hard drive if you are cash strapped.

Install OS X on that borrowed drive.

Then install the Winclone app (free) on the OS X drive and pull an image of you Windows partition on that OS X drive.

Repartition the Windows HDD with GUID partition table and HFS+ (Mac OS X journaled). Use disk utility to clone your complete OS X with the winclone image to the ex Windows drive and take out the borrowed drive. Boot from the new system drive that used to hold Windows.

Start Bootcamp Assi and prepare your Windows Bootcamp partition. Shut down Bootcamp Assi without installing Windows.

Start Winclone app and clone the Windows image from the system drive back on the new Bootcamp partition.

Finally try to get migration assi to rescue your data, apps and all your stuff from the dying drive.
 
I installed a new 500gb hard drive, installed leopard and used migration assistant to copy the data from the dying HD to the new one.

But last night it started doing the same thing again, and now every time i turn it on the loading bar comes up and just stops halfway (it doesn't load a far as it did, it only goes up to about 4 or 5 bars now)

Could it be a fault in some of the software from the old HD that's causing this ?

Or maybe a hardware failure ?

Please help me, I really want to get using my mac pro again without this to worry about, this is the first time anything has gone wrong with it mac i've owned !
 
I don't think so. Last night when my computer was working again after installing the new HD I installed the latest update, but when I restarted it started doing this again.

Is it possible some corrupted data was transfered from the old HD to this one when I used migration assistant ? That's all I can think of really.
 
Right this is getting really annoying. I managed to get into OSX on the new HD, but only with the mac pro dvd (disc 1) in the drive. I'm not booting from the dvd, it's just sitting in the drive yet the computer decides 'Yeah i think ill boot now'. I'd give anything to solve this issue but it appears after many many many google searches I'm the only person in the whole world that this has ever happened to.

Any help anyone can give me is really appreciated.
 
lannister80 said:
Is that a firmware update status bar?

Also, Macs do indeed have a safe mode, which you get by holding down shift. Prevents all kinds of stuff from loading (login items, etc). That's the mode MacFixIt recommends you boot into when/before applying OS updates.
Click to expand...

That's the safe sleep progress bar. For some reason his Mac Pro is being thrown into safe sleep.

Are you actually shutting it down or are you putting it to sleep?
 
Thanks so much, now I know what it is and that it's not too serious.

It's been working fine for the past 2 boot ups, so I'm hoping it won't happen anymore, but the problem is I don't know what caused it so I can't take any measures to prevent it happening again.

But lets pretend it is still happening for a minute.

I'm shutting it down yes, but since I started getting this 'safe sleep' progress bar I've been shutting it down by holding the power button on the front of the machine since that's the only way. Are you saying the screen wakes up but the mac is just going into 'safe sleep' mode ? Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening ?
 
Ok I turned it on this morning, and I'm having the same problem. Won't boot, and gives me the half loaded 'safe sleep mode' progress bar.

This is really frustrating. I'd like to use my mac pro this weekend, so if anyone has a solution or suggestion for this issue, please let me know.
 
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