2006 4x2.66 Mac Pro won't boot from any media

Hello,
This Mac Pro will get to the boot options screen, where I'm able to see all attached disks. But once one is selected, it goes to the typical Apple logo with spinning icon, then flashes blue for a second before going to a grey screen with SBBOD.
I've tried booting up with each RAM card removed and get the same issue wither way. Nether RAM card indicates bad RAM. The diagnostic lights on the board above the RAM do not indicate a problem.
I've also tried booting without the video card by using a test system that has Remote Desktop enabled, but no luck.
Reset PRAM and SMC.
At this point the only thing I can think of is the logic board, but that seems a bit extreme. Does anyone have any ideas what else I might try?
Thanks!

Are you using the original grey install disks?
One disk will have Apple hardware test instructions printed on it. Try following that to see if it can boot to run a test. (Hold D at boot IIRC).
You can try downloading the AHT images & burning them to a CD if you know the model number - there is a list of AHT images at…
https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest
You could also try target disk mode to see if the hardware can boot & allow the internal disk(s) to be read on another system (assuming you have the correct leads - Firewire or Thunderbolt are supported).
How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode
Target disk mode is a firmware feature so it may help isolate the OS's or disks as the issue.
Don't forget about single user mode & verbose mode - they may give you more items to look at, but can be very confusing to look at
Mac OS X: How to start up in single-user or verbose mode

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Mac Pro doesn't boot from any media

Hi,
We have a Dual Xeon Mac Pro that has been running fine since 2007 the person that uses it reported that it started making loud banging noises (how loud I do not know as thats quite subjective although it was loud enough to warrant other people in the office going to see what the noise was) and then the desktop crashed and now when it boots we get the folder with a flashing question mark.
I've put it down to disk failure but due to them having a Mac Pro (intel) and a Dual G5 PowerMac I think at some point in time they binned off one set of disks believing that one set would work for both machines resulting in none of the disks they have will boot the machine.
Oddly I haven't been able to boot it from any other media though, I downloaded the live version of Ubuntu for Netbooks to try to get it to boot from that but it wouldn't boot from that either and when I put it in selective startup mode it detects the CD in the drive as Windows.
So here I am with a Mac Pro an old G4 Mirror Doors era Apple Keyboard, no media that will boot the thing for diagnostics and wondering what my next move is. Back in the day when I admin'd a network of Mac's it'd be selective boot from a firewire drive try a repair do some cloning if required slap a new disk in reimage and off we go.
I haven't actively worked on a day to day basis on Apple kit for about 4 years though so I'm a bit rusty and have no experience with the Intel Architecture Macs other than my Mum and Dads iMac and MacBook and I'm pretty sure the media that came with them wont boot the Mac Pro, different media sets never used to work across ranges, not sure how true that is now though.
Any help with this much appreciated. Stats below
Sean

I had a quote from the local Apple Service Centre and Media for this machine was £70.
Luckily we found the Media for the Mac Pro inside a box for some other software.
I have since been able to retrieve the data by inserting the disk into a SATA equipped G5 and using disk utility on that machine to repair the volume and disk.
I've retrieved the data and the disk, volume and permissions structures all check out.
However the Intel Mac Pro will not boot from the now repaired drive, or from the original DVD shipped with the computer.
So off to the Apple Service Centre it goes for hardware diagnosis. I expect this to be expensive
Cheers
Sean

Mac Pro Won't Boot from any HDD

My system:
2008 8-core Mac Pro running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard
4 HDDs installed, 2 of them are a striped RAID 0 that is the bootup volume, a couble of external hard drives (1 of them a bootable clone), a DVI display
backed up with Time Machine; thanks for the concern.
Problem:
I came home one day, and my computer was acting funny. It was fine earlier in the day. Time Machine had failed a backup, an AFP mount had unmounted with an error, Dropbox was trying to sync but couldn't because of bad access permissions for a file, and Terminal wouldn't open, giving me a message about an invalid shell. I restarted, and it failed to restart, so I turned it off. I thought it was a corrupt filesystem (and striping is unstable, so it would make sense), but no, no other bootable disks worked.
Boot chime plays, grey screen comes up with Apple logo, wheel spins forever.
ATI graphics card fan runs pretty fast after a minute or so.
Light is solid, not blinking to indicate a RAM problem.
What I've tried:
Googled the problem. Got results about MacBook Pros. Did "-MacBook" in the search. Got similar questions but no solutions for my Mac.
Tried booting from an install DVD and the clone. Same thing happened.
Reset the PRAM (twice). No effect.
Reset the SMC (twice). No effect.
Unplugged the monitor. Graphics card fan wasn't loud, but the computer still wouldn't boot.
Unplugged all USB and FireWire devices. No effect.
Left the computer unplugged for an hour, which also resets the SMC. Who knows, this sometimes works! It didn't.
Any ideas?

Booting in Safe Mode did not help, but it did show a grey circle with a cross through it instead of an Apple logo like before.
I remembered that there's an Apple Hardware Test (a bit hard to figure out how to do on your specific machine ), and I booted into it. Before I even ran the test, it told me that there is an error. The error message was just the name of one of my RAM slots. So... a piece of RAM might be dead. I ran the extended test, and it was halfway through after 30 minutes, but I stopped it because I don't have enough time. I have to continue this tomorrow.
As for the GPU, its fans might just be running because the system runs them at a high level by default when it's in certain states. I know older Macs did this in Target Disk Mode with every fan, and the GPU fan was running during the AHT too. At least I hope this is the case. Right now, it seems beyond a hard drive problem. Maybe booting from a DVD works because it only uses 1 RAM slot or something. I'd much rather have a piece of inexpensive RAM be dead than my GPU, and besides, I've kinda wanted to upgrade the RAM anyway.

Macbook Pro won't boot from any partition, at all

I tried updating an Early 2008 Intel-based Macbook pro to a clean install of Mavericks with a bootable USB drive, once in the startup manager, it would show the USB as an "EFI BOOT". and trying to access the EFI BOOT just gives me a prohibited sign
The boot copy of Mavericks was installed with Disk Utility, so it shouldn't have had any problems.
So I thought, "I'll completely erase the HD and try again". Did that, and still, "EFI BOOT".
Next thing I did was ditch the USB method, and go for brute force, booted the Mac in Target Disk Mode, and through firewire I was able to install Mavericks into the HD of that Mac, using my brother's Early 2008 intel-based Macbook pro. The clean install worked, it made the recovery partition with no problem. Next thing I know, upon booting the laptop, after restarting it from Target Disk Mode, the darn computer decides to give me the "no boot device found" dreaded Question-Mark-on-a-folder sign. So I restarted the thing to the Startup Manager, and both partitions showed up, I tried both partitions, and no luck, same Question Mark Sign-Thing, not even the recovery booted.
So on target disk mode again, I made 2 partitions, one with a bootable mavericks EDM, and the other one, free space, Mac OS Journaled, ready for the OS installation. So that it would install it by itself, to itself. Upon restarting and accessing the Startup Manager, the bootable partition I had created, was seen, but clicking on it would just give me the question mark.
I shrank the partition on the other macbook to make a bootable firewire device on the other mac, and that partition also said "EFI BOOT" when clicked on.
I burned a recovery DVD to boot from it, and it won't boot from it. Every time I try to boot from something, all I get is the question-mark-on-a-folder-sign.
I disassembled the laptop, got the HD out, tried installing straight into it via USB, and was not able to access it using an external HD case, the power light comes on, and right back off.
PRAM and SMC have been Reset.
any ideas?

When I removed it, it was to install mavericks into it, via usb, with the other macbook, through disk utility, but disk utility was unable to read it then.
And yes, I am able to boot from that HD, on the other macbook, either through firewire or USB... I've verified that it is working fine, no sounds, no clicks, no scratching noises.

Early 2008 mac pro won't boot from hdd when ssd is installed

I have Mountain Lion 10.8.3 installed on my 1TB HDD in my early 2008 mac pro. That is the only OS install on my mac. I have an OWC SSD formatted but left as an empty drive that I am trying to use but when it's installed my mac hangs on the blank gray screen.
My mac cold boots fine and runs fine when the SSD is *not* installed. When I shut down and put the SSD into a drive bay the mac does seem to boot ok the first time, but when the computer is off for a while it will not boot. It just hangs on the blank gray screen (no apple logo). As soon as I pull out the SSD, the computer boots fine and runs fine again. I am not trying to boot off the SSD, I am booting off the HDD. The correct drive (1tb hdd) is selected in startup disk.
OWC has been helping me and I have tested 3 SSD's. So it does not appear to be a problem with their drive.
The mac will boot into safe mode with the SSD installed. It will boot if I choose the boot drive with the option key at startup.
Mountain Lion was clean installed.
Could it be some sort of library pref or cache issue?
Any recommendations on what to try?

A HT does not find a lot of errors.
It doesn't look for bad sectors or directory or file problems.
Clone your SSD now that you have a clean OS and has the Apple updates on it. Before you make changes.
Install TRIM Enabler 2.2+ on it and any boot volume, to enable TRIM and so that Disk Utility's Repair Disk will trim cells. Mountain Lion Recovery won't which is a shame, so...
Clone and keep bootable backup clone of your system to use for maintenance.
A really bad directory on a system drive will cause interference from booting.
SSDs really need extra care, and even with TRIM, to be repaired from time to time and couple times a year, to do an erase and restore from a current image.
Of course Mac OS system even iwth apps is small and doesn't need to have any data or media and fits on 120GB usually just fine and still have a good enough amount free so TRIM and Garbage Collection can work properly and not get low on free pages. But 20GB free should be the minimum free, and better to have more, at least whatever total amount is written out in a month.

BRAND NEW Mac Pro won't boot from Leopard DVD, kernel panics!

I just received my brand new Mac Pro today. It's a BTO machine with the upgrade to the NVIDIA 8800GT, a second optical drive and a Mac OS X Server license. The system has Mac OS X server installed on the default 320GB drive. I decided to use the server license as a virtual machine running in Leopard client. So, I installed 2 new 500GB Seagate 7200.11 (Retail) drives in the machine, zeroed them out in prep for installing Leopard client.
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This is my first Mac and it looks like this Mac Pro is going back for an exchange and I'll have to wait yet another 10-12 days for a replacement to arrive. Bummer.
Am I missing something simple here? Does this seem to be a hardware issue?
If anyone has any ideas before I ship this one back, please write!!!

New Mac Pros will not install the Leopard retail disc. They will only install the Leopard disc which shipped with them labeled Mac Pro. That has always been true. Macs can only boot the system that ships on DVD in the box that came with them, and newer retail releases. They can never boot from an older retail release than what shipped in the box.

My Macbook Pro won´t boot from any source/device

Im having trouble by booting my Macbook Pro from any device. I can reach any BIOS screen were i am able to choose the startupdisk, and whatever I choose (Hard drive / Install OS X DVD disc / Other Hard disks / USB Flash with OSx running) the machine stays in the grey screen forever.
I also tried to install again the OS on the internal Hard Drive of my machine, from another working macbook in the firewire transfer mode on, and it resulted to be succesfull and i can run the OS on the injured macbook pro, from the other computer.
Any ideas what this could be?
Thanks in advance.
Pelu.

Pelu,
which model MacBook Pro do you have? Do you have Mac OS X 10.6.0 installed on it? If not, which version of OS X is installed? Do you also have the grey DVD for it that holds its Apple Hardware Test?

Macbook pro won't boot from any disk

I have a Macbook Pro 17" with 10.6.8 installed but won't bootup. It stays on the logo and spinning gear screen and won't proceed from there. I have tried to reboot from a Snow Leopard install disk but it won't recognize it and haven't been able to startup from another computer using firewire connection. I am so puzzled?

Sounds like a hardware issue.
Run through this list of fixes and checks.
Step by Step to fix your Mac

Mac Pro won't wake from prolonged sleep in Mountain Lion

My Mac Pro won't wake from sleep after it is in sleep mode for several hours at a time. It will wake if the sleep period is short. But if it sleeps overnight it will not wake the next morning. Nothing seems to work. It requires a hard restart. I am running OS X 10.8.2. I read in another site that this problem was fixed for Macbook Air and Macbook Pro by turning off hibernate mode in Terminal. But I doubt this would help with my Mac Pro.
Any thoughts or ideas?
Thanks.
John

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19939004#19939004

G5 gets grey screen with logo then goes black, won't boot from any disk

Won't boot from any disk, already changed VRAM battery, no success. tried hardware disk once and ran a full scan, said error with Video, but now won't boot at all with any disk. Screen is choppy also(have pic). Thinking video graphics card? Not sure. Need help!

Hi bribiel, and a warm welcome to the forums!
It certainly sounds like the Video card from the little info we have, & that can certainly cause it to fail to bootup.

Mid 2006 Macbook Pro won't boot (from HD or optical)

My mid 2006 Macbook Pro will not boot from the hard disk, or from the internal DVD. I am currently running the latest version of Lion (10.7).
I tried searching the forums and found a similar issue here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1687899?start=0&tstart=0
But that was with a Mac Mini. And it doesn't look like the OP issue was ever resolved. I am having the exact same problem.
When attempting a normal boot from the internal HD of the Macbook Pro. It will make the happy chime of a successful POST. It will display the Apple logo. And that's as far as she gets.
No spinning wheel, no error image, no nothing. Eventually the system will start spinning up the fans as if it were under load (this was after about a half hour of just letting it sit there).
Doing a verbose boot, it never went past this:
com.apple.driver.Apple.IntelCPUPowerManagement
Photo of verbose boot:
Here's what I've tried.
1. Bought a brand new battery (as the current one was at death's door)
2. Zapped PRAM (Apple + Option + P + R)
3. Reset SMC according to these directions: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US
4. Attempted to boot to my original Tiger (10.4) install DVD, only to stop at this point during a verbose boot (Apple V):
Extension "com.apple.driver.AppleACPIPlatform" has immediate dependencies on both com.apple.kernel and com.apple.kpi components; use only one style
Photos:
5. I am able to put her in Target Disk Mode (hold T at boot). Then with a firewire cable I can connect it to my wife's Macbook 13" and I am able to run disk utility on it! Disk Utility did find and repair errors, however, it still refuses to boot.
6. I attempted to boot from my wife's Macbook 13" in Target Disk Mode. I put her machine in Target disk mode. Connected the firewire cable. Powered on my 15" MBP while holding the option key. Then I selected her drive as the boot disk... however it still refuses to boot even from a known working HD.
7. Finally, I swapped around RAM DIMMs with no change in behavior.
Help! I know she's an older gal (Laptop is 6 years old now) but I'm not exactly flush with cash and would rather not give up on her just yet.

My Mac started freezing (colored pinwheel) every time I tried using any application (i.e. Safari, iPhoto). After restarting for the 2nd time, it would no longer boot - makes start up sound but gets stuck on gray screen w/ apple icon. I tried resetting PRAM also - did nothing. I decided to reinstall OS; problem now is my HD is nowhere to be found! I am a tech dummy so this is way beyond my comprehension...I'm not seeing my HD from the Disk Utility either???
Side question...I backed up my files (mostly pics JPEG and videos) on DVD (had to compress to save). Why can't I open files on PC?

Mac Pro won't boot

Hey guys,
I've had my mac pro for a little over a year now, never had any problems until this weekend. I was in the middle of playing Mass Effect 2 on my windows 7 drive and all of it sudden it glitched out. Turned it off and tried booting again and on the windows side the first windows logo during boot won't even come up (just a black screen) and it will keep restarting. On my OSX drive it starts loading, the little circle under the apple is spinning around but, as soon as it seems like it's done and it should load up my desktop the screen goes all retro with black, orange, yellow lines. Then it goes back to the OSX loading screen with the circle but, it is no longer spinning and is frozen there.
I'm hoping that my video card just crapped out and I need to replace that since it appears to only have problems when it needs to output video other than basic start up screens. Possibly someone here has come across this before or knows what I need? I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions.

"glitches" don't really point to why.
Memory leak, BSOD, graphic driver (rather than card), heat, even lack of UPS and a "power event."
Backups for both systems, a must.
Boot into Safe Mode or Recovery mode on Windows.
Restore from last good known restore point.
Sounds like each system is on its own hard drive so it shouldn't have hit both, and you can pull out either or both to fix one.
As for OS X, never "leave home" without Disk Warrior and SuperDuper.
Makes it easy to restore and rebuild.
I'd say turning off has to be one of those "last resort" and more likely to make matters worse, but first step would be to boot from alternate media and not touch the system if possible you were on.
Sounds like OS X has corrupt journal and directory at this point, and it really can't heal itself.

Mac Pro will not boot from cd or external drive

My Mac has an issue whith the boot drive, and I would like to format the drive and reinstall OS-X Mountain Lion and then use Time Machine to resore the Data. When I try to boot my Early 2009 Mac Pro (OS-X 10.8) using the option key, it loads the scrren that allows me to choose among the bootable drives. Once I choose either an external drive or CVD, it loads to the apple screen, stays there for about 5 minutes, then loads the OS on the main drive... Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Bill Mueller

At first I was just going to say it sounds like you have a bad optical drive, but then you had to go and say that it also won't boot from a HDD.
That just makes things a whole lot worse.
Start by removing the side cover and checking the RAM to see if any of the LEDs are lit up indicating bad RAM. Usually if there's any bad RAM found, it will just automatically disable that stick, but maybe yours isn't for some reason.
Look for any other LEDs that may be lit. Generally speaking, the only time you should see an LED (outside of the power LED) lit consistently is if there's a problem.
You should also see if you can get Apple Hardware Test to run, which may or may not find some problem.
But sorry to say, it's sounding very suspiciously like a bad logic board.
One other thing to try, is putting the SL drive into a different slot. So if you were putting it in slot 2, try slot 3 or 4. If you just have a bad SATA port, you might be able to just work around that until you get a new system.
If by chance this system is still under warranty, do not walk, do not pass go, do not collect $200, RUN to the nearest AASP or Apple store to make it THEIR problem to sort out.

Mac Pro will not boot from Leopard or any CD or DVD install disk

My Mac Pro wont boot from my Leopard install DVD. It never gets by the gray screen, then after several minutes the screen scrolls down black and says I need to restart my computer. I tried my Tiger install disk and it still wont boot from that DVD. Held down the "C", used "option" and selected DVD and still no boot. I can boot from one HD that has Leopard 10.5.8, but another HD with Snow Leopard 10.6.3 will not boot. The HD with Snow Leopard shows up as "EFI Boot" not the name I gave that HD when I startup using the "option" key. Any help would be appreciated.

At first I was just going to say it sounds like you have a bad optical drive, but then you had to go and say that it also won't boot from a HDD.
That just makes things a whole lot worse.
Start by removing the side cover and checking the RAM to see if any of the LEDs are lit up indicating bad RAM. Usually if there's any bad RAM found, it will just automatically disable that stick, but maybe yours isn't for some reason.
Look for any other LEDs that may be lit. Generally speaking, the only time you should see an LED (outside of the power LED) lit consistently is if there's a problem.
You should also see if you can get Apple Hardware Test to run, which may or may not find some problem.
But sorry to say, it's sounding very suspiciously like a bad logic board.
One other thing to try, is putting the SL drive into a different slot. So if you were putting it in slot 2, try slot 3 or 4. If you just have a bad SATA port, you might be able to just work around that until you get a new system.
If by chance this system is still under warranty, do not walk, do not pass go, do not collect $200, RUN to the nearest AASP or Apple store to make it THEIR problem to sort out.

MacBook Pro Won't Boot from Leopard DVD

My brother's MacBook Pro (2009 13") won't boot from the Leopard install DVD. Here is what happened:
- I tried to do Bootcamp on it. I installed Windows 7 but realized that there were no Bootcamp drivers for that.
- Deleted Widnows 7 and put the XP install disc in. Somehow, it formatted my Mac partition instead of my Windows partition.
- Now that the MBP was only running Windows XP, I connected it to my iMac in target disk mode and wiped it (GUID, one Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partition).
- I tried to put the Leopard (10.5.0) install DVD in there so I can restore from the Time Machine backup, and it sees it when I hold option at bootup but refuses to boot from it.
- I reset the PRAM and tried again, no luck.
What is going on here? Does it have to do with the fact that it was doing Bootcamp? I either want to boot from the disc or somehow restore from Time Machine some other way. I can use another computer (my iMac) if I need to.

Haha yeah, I posted right before. The thing I'm wondering now: Does this mean that a Mac that came with Lion cannot be downgraded to Snow Leopard? Well, I'll save it for another question if I ever cross that bridge.
Limnos wrote:
Just so we know, this is the original OS disc that came with this computer? Even if you're trying to use a retail installer disc I am not sure those came out the the sufficient sub-version required to boot the computer (I think it needs at least 10.5.7 but don't have the specifics of your model).
Edit: I guess I'm a slow typist.

2006 4x2.66 Mac Pro won't boot from any media

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