Early 2008 Mac pro freeze - anyone ?

I just deployed my 2.8 Mac Pro yesterday, and within two days, I had three instances when the computer froze. The mouse pointer was still moving on the screen, but apart from that, no response to keys or clicks. There was also one instance when the video signal to the monitor was lost. In each case, I had to do a hard reboot. Anyone else experiencing those problems ?

Be sure to repair your drive before you continue working.
Yes, I have.
As a workaround for Apple bug 5679432 (Mac OS X hang under heavy disk load when unbuffered I/O is in use), VMware Fusion 1.1.1 disables unbuffered disk I/O on Mac OS X 10.5 hosts, even when the user selects Optimize for Mac OS application performance in VMware Fusion preferences.
http://www.vmware.com/support/fusion/doc/releasenotes_fusion.html#new111
Keep your system backed up regularly, and hope it won't be long to get a fix out.

Similar Messages

Early 2008 Mac pro freeze

This is in reply to http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1369379
I'm having the exact same issue but it seems that this issue has NOT been resolved over the year.
Any work arounds and fixes?
<Post Relocated and Edited by Host>

So news on this topic.
One thing I noticed was that after the force restarts. The backup drive that mounted seemed always mount as "read only". This can be repaired using disk utility. However, the issue still persisted.
Solution:
If you unplug the firewire the system provides the login screen to enter the password without restarting the system.
Conclusion:
The issue is some how drive related. One of the following issues might be an issue.
1. The drive is bad.
-- unplugged the driveS to see which drive might be an issue
-- this will also isolate if it's a specific drive that has the issue or the cable or the board itself
2. The cable is bad.
3. The motherboard is bad.
stay tuned....

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro, 8 gb ram with a Dell 27" display and a 42" LG TV. I am thinking about upgrading the stock ATI Radeon 2600 graphics card for better resolution, preferring 2 dvi outputs. Does anyone have any suggestions on the best card?

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro, 8 gb ram with a Dell 27” display and a 42” LG TV. I am thinking about upgrading the stock ATI Radeon 2600 graphics card for better resolution, preferring 2 dvi outputs or 1 dvi and 1 vga vs 1 dvi and a mini. I don't do a lot of Final Cut Pro, gaming, etc. I am interested in best value for the graphics card.
Does anyone have any suggestions on the best graphics card for these larger displays for the best value?
Thanks,
Kevin

I recommend you install nothing older than the Apple-firware 5770, about US$250.
RE: Mac Pro Replacement Graphics cards
1) Apple brand cards,
2) "sold in the Apple store" cards, and
3) "Mac Edition" cards ...
... show all the screens, including Boot up screens, Safe Mode, Installer, Recovery, debug screens, and Alt/Option boot screens. At this writing, these choices include:
1) Apple brand cards:
• Apple-firmware 5770, about US$250** works near full speed in every model Mac Pro, Drivers in 10.6.5
• Apple-firmware 5870, about US$450
2) "sold in the Apple store" cards
• NVIDIA Quadro 4000, about US$1200
• NVIDIA Quadro 5000, about US$2500
3) "Mac Edition" cards -- REQUIRE 10.8.3 or later:
• SAPPHIRE HD 7950 3GB GDDR5 MAC Edition, about US$480** Vendor recommends Mac Pro 4,1
• EVGA GTX 680 Mac Edition, about US$600
The cards above require no more than the provided two 6-pin aux power connectors provided in the Mac Pro through 2012 model. Aux cables may not be provided for third-party cards, but are readily available.
If you are Meet ALL of these:
• running 10.8.3 or later AND
• don't care about "no boot screens" etc AND
• can re-wire or otherwise "work out" the power cabling, THEN:
You can use many more cards, even most "PC-only cards"

Early 2008 Mac Pro + nVidia 8800: Never going to work?

This forum is littered with threads about early 2008 Mac Pros with the nVidia 8800 card - none of them positive.
I was unfortunate enough to wait for Apple to release such a machine and buy it. Graphics performance is dire given the hardware available. The machine routinely crashes with the window manager hang problem (the user interface just locks up, yet network services etc. still work), in the way familiar to anyone blighted by this particular bug; just run the Folding@Home client on your machine if you want to experience the joy. Or screensavers, sometimes, so I've had to turn those off. And I've had to turn off monitor power saving too, because I too suffer from the 'monitors sometimes don't wake up' bug. And of course I can't sleep the machine either, because firmware upgrade or not, it's still not reliable. And after all this, still the machine crashes.
SSH to the machine; try to restart cleanly; even 'sudo reboot' won't restart it. Apple have achieved something I've never seen out of any Unix or Unix-like operating system, ever; the kernel is unable to kill its own processes.
There have been no indications from Apple that I've seen on these forums over several weeks that the problem is even being acknowledged, let alone tackled. Latest reports indicate that even the 1st gen Mac Pro owners are suffering if they install the 8800.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1460752&tstart=0
My machine rarely makes it through the day without a forced reboot due to the window manager hanging. I can't do any work on it. I can't rely on it. I can't enjoy it. I can't even use it for web browsing without fear of it hanging.
There seem to be no facts about this at all. So all I can ask for is opinions. Does anyone have any offering of hope that early 2008 Mac Pros might ever work properly with 8800 cards? Y'know, little things, like actually being able to handle graphics? Or sleeping the monitors? Or, heaven forbid, sleeping the whole machine? Or should I just send it back as unfit for purpose?
Yours, tired and exasperated... :-/

I posted this in some other blog (forum), I should have posted this here also but I hope this gives you and all with these problems hope!! I also ran some fish tank test some else posted to get the folding problem to happen and I can not get it to happen at all now, and since my 8800 went in I get NO LOCKUPS, SCREEN FREEZES, shaky blurry video when I boot, so far NOTHING, IT JUST WORKS!!!!!!!!
Now that I think about it the person who said to use the fish tank program had a bad 8800 and maybe you do also!! here is the link to that:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6965475&#6965475
I purchased my first mac pro early 08 2 months ago (amazon.com).
2 quad core 2.8's, 2 gig apple 4 gig OWC total 6 gig ram,2-WD raptors (1st mac 2nd boot camp winxp 32 bit), apple care.
I had all my problems with the ATI card (I always purchased ATI, never Nvidia, for all the PC's I built) a couple of times I bought the first ones out, these had all kinds of problems until good drivers that actually worked were released (usually 6-12 months after the release of the card).
So I try not to buy routers, graphic cards, etc.. for at least 6-12 months, but back to my 2600 card!!
When I received my mac the graphics would freeze, I did a lot of online reading only to find out the ATI 2600 was the problem, the cure was to hook up 2 monitors to the card (and that worked!!).
Then they came out with the firmware update, now my main monitor would after 2 days on a reboot be scambled (samsung syncmaster 213t, NEVER had ANY problem with it before on any PC I had, so I knew it was not the monitor) to fix the problem I had to either turn power off to the syncmaster or resetting PRAM (worked for a couple more days, then the same problem).
I called apple and they sent a tech out within days to replace the ATI card, the replacement did the same thing after a couple of days, so I called Apple back and they took a bunch of info from my computer (BTW not much at all loaded in the mac side) and said to call back in a week, so I called back a week later and they said they were going to exchange the card for either another ati 2600 or the Nvidia 8800, I said 8800 and a day later on a saturday I received it, swapped the card and NEVER HAD ANY PROBLEMS at all!!
So I don't know if the ATI card has problems with certain monitors or they are just poorly made (maybe AMD is mad with Apple that Apple did not use AMD processors).
I have read others that swapped with the 8800 and their problems went away also!!!!
Maybe some have no problems with the 2600, but I would not recommend it to anyone, if you can avoid the 2600 GO WITH THE 8800, the drivers will get better (and the 8800 will eventually outperform the ATI)and you will not be sorry.
Apple is awesome, they are 2nd to none, their is no other company like this anymore that I have dealt with in a long time (not just because they gave me a 8800), like I said in the beginning of this post I always purchased ATI cards and would have kept it if it would have worked but 2 doing the same, ATI [AMD] has lost my support until they prove otherwise.
I recommend Mac's to everyone now!!
good luck and let me know it any of this has helped!!!!!!!!!!

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro, which has re-booting problems. Also what does the spinning beach-ball indicate?

Hi, I have an early 2008 Mac Pro which has re-booting problems.
Processor speed is: 2.8
Memory: 2GB 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM
2 x 28GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon
I am running OSX Yosemite Version 10.10
My Mac Pro keeps re-booting. Last year I had to replace my graphics card. My original card was the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 255MB, and that is what I have now. At this precise moment my Mac Pro is running perfectly, except that it is slow and the spinning beach-ball keeps appearing. I have managed to do some work with the disk utilities, verifying, cleaning and partitioning. Some errors were found and when it was cleaned this seemed to help my Mac Pro to function properly. Although I am able to use my Mac Pro now, from day to day I still experience re-boot problems. Also quite unexpectedly my mac dictionary has an error, it closed itself down and will not open at all, I had the message to say that a report will be sent to Apple.
I have tried starting my computer with an external hard drive fitted via a USB cable, I use for back-ups. This worked and I was able to wipe my hard drive clear and replace all info from the back up I had done only a few days ago.
This worked for a few days and then the same problem started again.
I am beginning to wonder if I need to buy a new hard drive.
If there is anyone who has some answers to help me solve my problem, I would be most grateful.
Robert

When you have the beachball activity, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.
These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.
The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select
          SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages
from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select
          View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.
Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.
Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.
Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.
Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

How do I fix my early 2008 mac pro boot hard disk. Lost everything when it crashed hard, can not reinstal via cd/dvd drive... are there any fix get it boot from dvd drive?

I have an early 2008 MAC PRO Quad Core 3.0ghz processor. 8 Gig of rams, with a 1 Gig memory Radeon 5770 HD Graphic Card running the latest Version of Snow Leopard OS. Last week lighting struck the house take out all of my hard drives (4) thank god the surge protector mitigated the mother board from damaged, use the Parted Magic to check out the motherboard and it intact with no damage. I can boot with the Parted-magic and be able surf and post this question to this forums. I replaced a newly formatted hard drive and trying to installed OS X Mountain Lions to the new drive, but unable to have it boot in my MAC PRO DVD, I get the usual chimes during the booting processed but the screen remain blackout, but able to boot with Parted-Magic to surf the web and access Apple sites/forums.
I am not well verse in using the Parted_Magic to repair or get my-mac to boot normally so I can reinstall OS X. Any help would appreciated.
Thank you
Disabled Veteran.

Go to System Profile and look, does it say "MacPro3,1"?
That is 2008.
FBDIMM would be 800MHz. Did you use older slower 667MHz in yours?
You can but take a hit in performance.
Sounds like MacPro1,1.
Mac Pro (3.0GHz quad core (dual CPUs) 8GB 667 RAM)
In 2007 March an 8-core 3GHz did come out 2,1.
So just to be clear.
===========
It was all working fine a couple of days ago. At the time it randomly shut down I was trying to use Boot Camp to create a Windows 7 area,
Whenever you want to install Windows, remove all the drives other than the one Windows goes to. And if you use a dedicated drive YOU DO NOT NEED Boot Camp Assist, unless you use XP, which really is limited and crippled (one processor, 1.9GB RAM support).
And when it freezes, your only choice is to nuke (reformat) and restore or get out that backup CLONE you made before (ie, Step #1 in the Boot Camp Guide).
Sure that whole NTFS / MBR / GUID could be an issue, but you should just have a blank drive or clone.
No don't bother Apple, they seem to not have a good sense about Windows on Mac Pro anyway.
Other than zap pram from cold boot / tried booting with NO drives inside and just 10.6. DVD - should be fine.
You should be fine iwth Windows 7 DVD and one drive, or even XP.
Make sure you take your time and reconnect cards etc properly and any cables.
Booting from OS X DVDs may not work if there is a drive with a totally shot directory or partition table. Put them in FW case and turn on AFTER OS X is booted.
Why aren't people Cloning as a Backup Strategy
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.2
How To clone

Early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 Mystery Logic Board/GPU Issue

I recently received an Early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 for free because the owner couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. It would boot up with the startup chime, but never output any video, and kept rebooting and replaying the startup chime. Using the diagnostic LEDs on the logic board, I was able to see that the Power Good LED (LED 7) and the EFI LED (LED 9) were both on, but the GPU LED (LED 8) never lit up. After trying all the PCI slots and confirming that the graphics card worked in another Mac Pro, I confirmed it wasn't the graphics card. I then tried a different power supply and different power supply cables, different RAM, different RAM boards, but still nothing. (Note: I also went through all the usual stuff: Power Cycling, PRAM, SMC Reset)
I then ordered a replacement logic board (used from eBay) and spent the weekend swapping out the logic board. After the swap, the Mac Pro STILL won't output video, and now the EFI LED (LED 9) won't even light up. Tried resetting the EFI Firmware via a CD, and still nothing. Does anyone have any idea as to what the issue could be? I'm 95% certain I plugged everything back in correctly on the board, but I don't know what else to do other than tear it apart again to confirm everything is plugged in. The only other thing I can think of is that the second logic board I received was also bad.
Please help!!!

Your problem sounds like a graphics card problem to me.
confirming that the graphics card worked in another Mac Pro,
Was this also a Mac Pro 2008 model? was it running the same Mac OS X version as you are testing? what version?
what graphics card are you trying to use? Genuine Apple or flashed PC or unflashed PC? what Mac OS X version?
That second board sounds Bad to me if it won't say EFI-OK.

Installing OS and Apps on SSD boot drive on early 2008 Mac Pro while keeping all other data from old iMac on hdd

So I've just got myself a early 2008 Mac Pro with a OCZ RevoDrive 80GB PCIe SSD to replace my old iMac which is slowly but surely giving up on me. I want to put my OS (mavericks) and some/all (whichever is possible/easier) apps, both apple and 3rd party, from my old iMac, onto the SSD but keep all my other data on the 2TB HDD, also from my old iMac, in the mac pro. Can anyone tell me how to do this/if its possible? (not massively tech savvy so simpleish language and steps would be handy!) Thanks!

How to use an SSD with your HDD
If you are going to use an SSD as a boot drive together with your existing HDD as the "data" drive, here's what you can do.
After installing the SSD you will need to partition and format the SSD using Disk Utility. Then, install OS X on the SSD. After OS X has been installed boot from the SSD. Use Startup Disk preferences to set the SSD as the startup volume.
Open Users & Groups preferences. Click on the lock icon and authenticate. CTRL- or RIGHT-click on your user account listing in the sidebar and select Advanced Options from the context menu. You will see a field labeled "Home dir:" At the right end you will see a Change button. Click on it. In the file dialog locate the Home folder now located on the HDD (HDD/Users/account_name/.) Select the folder, click on Open button. Restart the computer as directed.
When the computer boots up it will now be using the Home folder located on the HDD.
Another more technical method involving the Terminal and aliases is discussed in depth here: Using OS X with an SSD plus HDD setup - Matt Gemmell. This is my preferred approach because I can select which of the Home's folders I want on the HDD and which I don't want. For example, I like to keep the Documents and Library folders on the SSD because I access their content frequently.
Be sure you retain the fully bootable system on your HDD in case you ever need it.

Hi everyone,I am new to this so please forgive me any mistakes I may make.Early 2008 Mac Pro desktop installed ML ok but next day nothing, reinstall ok restart same problem ML installer remains on my snow leopard disk. Any help appreciated.Kind regards

There I go first mistake straight off. I was wondering how to fit my big long problem in. My fault I am sure but if anyone can help please.
Early 2008 Mac Pro Desk Top, 2 hard drives 1)snow leopard, 2)lion.
I have downloaded Mountain Lion usuing disk 1,selected no.2 as my destination, installed ok everything fine, set my startup as no.2 in preferences, switch off. Next day start up - nothing, my only way to get moving was physcally remove disk 2, and let snow leopard restart.
Reinstalled, everything fine, then same problem on restart next day, remove disk,and so on.
The mountain Lion installer remains in the snow leopard dock.
I know the problem is me, so if anyone is kind enough to be able to offer a solution it needs to be in easy speak (press button a, press button b) because I am not that savvy.
my best regards to all, and thank you.

Where did you get Mountain Lion? Did you download the 4+ GB file from the App Store? If so, then I would try doing the following:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your second drive on which Lion is installed (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
Install Mountain Lion
Double-click on the Mountain Lion Installer application in your Applications folder. Follow instructions to install Mountain Lion on your old Lion drive - Drive 2. When the installer finally finishes it will restart the computer automatically from Drive 2. At this point there is no need to change the Startup Disk unless you want to boot from your Snow Leopard drive.
You will startup to the Setup Assistant in which you will configure your own admin account. You can, if you want, omit that part and instead choose to migrate your Home folder and other data from the Snow Leopard drive. I would recommend you do that unless you wish to do it manually at a later time. In this case create your new admin account using the exact same username and password that you now use on your Snow Leopard system.

2nd Optical-Drive for Early 2008 Mac Pro: Suggestions Required

I am hoping to add a second optical-drive to my Early 2008 Mac Pro. I notice that there are various SATA ones available for Early 2009 Mac Pro's onwards (e.g. the LG GH24NS90) but according to OWC (Other World Computing) these ones are apparently unsuitable for earlier Mac Pro's.
The current optical-drive in my Mac Pro is a Sony AD-7170A.
Can anyone suggest a suitable optical-drive that is still available as new (preferably available in the UK).
Thanks,
Yan Lee

The SATA optical drives will work fine in a 2008 Mac Pro. I just installed this model:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136259
I already have a Blu-Ray SATA drive in my other tray, so I've done this a couple of times now.
You have to run a SATA data cable through to one of the two ports on the motherboard - it involves removing the first two drive trays and the front fan. The cable goes up behind the top left corner of the compartment, together with the black cables feeding the optical ATA connectors. You CAN use an L-shaped (90 or 270 degree) SATA cable, but I've found that a regular straight cable works OK too - it is a tight fit behind the fan, but it should fit. The trouble with the L-shape is that it blocks the other SATA port. You can also look for low-profile SATA cables, which have slightly smaller heads.
You'll also need a molex-to-SATA power adaptor. Don't forget to remove the front bezel from the drive - I do this by attaching everything to power, don't slide the optical enclosure back into the space yet, power up the computer, eject the drive using its eject button, and then slide the bezel up and off. You can then slide the enclosure into the space. Turn the computer off to put the fan and drives back in.
Matt

Early 2008 Mac Pro, NVIDIA Quadro 5600, and Adobe CS5 - HELP!!!

Hello, I am currently pulling my hair out over my GPU situation. I'm eagerly awaiting the ship date for CS5, but I'm concerned about one of its system requirements, where it says an OpenGL capable card must be supported for the software to work.
So I went to their handy chart explaining which cards are supported, and mine, the Quadro FX 5600, is not listed on the Mac side. It is however listed on the Windows side.
But when I bought my Mac Pro, the 5600 was being offered by Apple, they're the ones who installed it for me! Haven't had a problem in CS4, but now I'm afraid I won't see the significant boost in power Adobe is promising from CS5.
When I called Adobe about it, I was on the phone for more than 45 minutes, talking to people in India who I even got to admit don't actually use the software, and ultimately told me they simply couldn't answer the question.
So if anyone could advise me wether or not my Early 2008 Mac Pro with Quadro FX 5600 graphics card will support OpenGL in After Effects CS5, I'd be eternally grateful.
Thanks so much!

I have always assumed there would be no problem. You can download from
http://www.realtech-vr.com/glview/download.html
the OpenGL Extensions Viewer, which, when launched DIRECTLY TESTS with which versions of the OpenGL standard your card is compatible. (Right now there appear to be download problems with the URL above (a 421 FTP error: server is limiting available connections.)
I'm also hoping this indicates no problems with CS5!
Hope this helps.
DMW

Early 2008 Mac Pro and the 5870

Several sources has stated that this card will work in the Early 2008 Mac Pro, but I am having issues. The card tests as bad and on restart the card is not seen as being installed. I can Screen Share and verify through System Profiler that the card is not seen by the system. Is anyone else having this issue, or is it just my luck?

and this is an Apple version card, right? not a PC.
What other video card did you have etc?
Apple ATI 5770 and 5870 work with 10.6.4+ in all Mac pro models.
ATI Radeon HD 5870 Upgrade
Radeon 5870 vs 5770 GTX 285 4870

Early 2008 Mac Pro - ATI 4870 - Apple 30'' Monitor - SL .... Does it work?

I have an early 2008 Mac Pro with a ATI 2600XT on an Apple 30" Cinema Display. I want to upgrade the video card to take advantage of the new features of Snow Leopard.
Before I take the plunge on buying the ATI 4870 I want to make sure there are no issues with this configuration... Does anyone have an experience with this setup? any issues? ( I assume I will not need to load the drivers since SL should have them)
Also how is the noise level of the ATI 4870? is the GTX card better in this regards?
Thanks in advance,

Other than benchtests and synthetic, there are no OpenCL aware or optimized apps out there. So it is a non-starter I think.
There are performance tests and depends on what you prefer and type of work. Some places the GTX is better and more RAM might help. The $100 is the other factor.
The ATI X1900 and 2600 and 3870 didn't look that good to my eye and I use the 8800GT, shame it was dropped, it was a nice card (just needed better $189 price, but that is true of the X1900 ($89?) and others. I think $349 is way too much for 4870 512MB. Flash PC.
Barefeats has OpenCL TEST in Snow L.

Early 2008 Mac Pro Raid + Radeon 4870

So far this has been a very disappointing experience in upgrading to SL!
I have an early 2008 Mac Pro with Apple software RAID as my boot drive, SL of course is not seeing this as a possible install drive as others have experienced. I have tried to boot directly off of two different SL retail upgrade disks but the installer crashes every time (I've verified that the drive boots off of other disks). I'm starting to suspect that it may be an issue with the Radeon 4870, has anyone else with a similar setup had any success in upgrading to SL? I'm going to try installing the original video card to see if that helps, otherwise it looks like I will be doing an install to a new hard drive from within Leopard.

I've got a 2006 Mac Pro, the first gen one. I've got a flashed PC 4870 and a three disk software raid of 640GB Western Digital HD's, Model: WDC WD6400AAKS-00A7B0. When I ran the install disk from Mac OS, I couldn't install to the raid, it didn't show up as a volume that could be installed to. However when I restarted from the DVD I had no trouble installing onto the raid at all. The install finished without a hitch. I also ran an install to my Intel X25-E and didn't have any trouble there either. So I know it is possible to get the install to work with a raid and a 4870.
Obviously my setup isn't exactly like yours though. But that's the best I can do.

Early 2008 Mac Pro Won't Boot

I have an early 2008 mac pro that will not boot. Power turns on, power LED turns solid, but no display ever comes up and it never chimes. I have tried swapping out RAM, hard drives, disconnecting all peripherals... any other suggestions? Dead logic board?
... and yes, I was too dumb to buy the AppleCare. Stupidest move I have ever made...

Hi I think I have a similar problem.
My Mac Pro 8 core doesn't start up. When I turn it on here's what it does: the boot up sound > the grey/white screen with the apple logo and the little turning gear thing > then it freezes.
Sometimes after that the screen either goes blue with nothing but a mouse pointer that's moveable. but no login window. I can access the hardrive by network and weird enough it's booting on safe mode. I tried setting the SMC firmware but it didn't work. I took it to an apple store and when they plugged it into their displays it worked. When I brought it back, I plugged it into my Cinema Display 30" and the same problem started again. I reset the SMC firmware again and tried different displays I have at home but had the same problem. I plugged the 30" display into a Macbook Pro and it worked fine so I know that the display is not the problem. I've heard the the Nvidia 7300GT has caused problems but why would it work in the apple store? Any help out there?

Early 2008 Mac pro freeze - anyone ?

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