Mac Pro 3-year failure

I wanted to get the community's input on an issue. I recently had my Mac Pro (Model MacPro 1,1 purchased it in late 2007) have a complete failure that ended up necessitating a new computer. In checking on the discussion boards, there have been a couple of mentions of others experiencing similar confounding problems around the 3 year mark.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/7913600#7913600,
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15918506#15918506
https://discussions.apple.com/message/15648010#15648010
I'm curious if any others have had experiences like this?
Thanks for the input,
Norm
Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Model 5,1/2.4 GHz/8 core (mid 2010) MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7), 13-inch Aluminum (Late 2008)

My Mac Pro 2,1 purchased in April 2007 still chugging along like a champ. I have 4 internal drives, 16 GB of memory and 3 PCIe cards so it hasn't been babied. Often have it churning away processing video with 50-80% processor usage for 10-12 hours at a time.

Similar Messages

Mac Pro Start up Failures: Fix

My Mac Pro 1.1 under OSX 10.7.5 just suffered from multiple start-up failures.
It would load it's system...the "loading clock" spun a while and then go to black. I still had cursor control and CD tray function.
I ran the system install disk, started a hardware diagnostic...and it repeatedly froze.
I thought I was fried......but without doing a hardware diagnostic...the system install disk could report all my components and memory.
I zapped the PRAM and still no joy. I finally checked the PRAM Battery..the CR2032 which had never been changed in 7 years.
I found another one in an Apple Remote I never use...swapped it out..and everything worked fine.
I've read that in some machines, a bad PRAM battery will cause a black screen.
Guess that's what I had.
If you have any startup issues, system loads and screen goes black...trying swapping the PRAM Battery.
Sounds easy. Took me about 3 hours and repeat startup failures to figure it out.
Are there any apps that check the PRAM Batterty to know they are starting to go bad?

Quick update: Had several more "freezes/crashes" after changing PRam battery.
Tracked it down to the Display Screen Saver.
When it launched into screen saver, it would freeze after a very short time.
I disabled the screensaver and adjusted my energy savings setting to just a few minites so know when i time sout...it goes to black.
It comes on with a mouse click with no problem.
Hopes it lasts.
I ran diagnostics on the video card/memory and it passed with no problems.
Something has corrupted my system which had been stable for quite a while.

Mac Pro Display flicker & failure to boot

Hello people who are smarter than me.
I have a 2008 Mac Pro 3.2/ 8CX 8800GT with the original Geforce video card installed. When I turn the machine on I get a grey screen with a black bar at the top, with no evidence of an actual boot (such as a darker grey apple in the middle of the screen.
After a minute or so, the screen retains the form of the black and white horizontal bar at the top but adds a rapidly cycling/strobing organge red and yellow flicker reminiscent of the old Monty Python crazy title screens.... It looks like this if you blink fast enough... or take a still photo.
I live in Haiti, where a fair amount of dust is constantly invading my tower, so I've had dust related issues before with memory... THis time, I don't think it's that. I've cleaned out the tower with pressurized air, reseated the memory and reseated the video card as well, to no advantage. The problem first came when the computer was working fine and while my daughter was opening a page on Firefox the screen just started jittering with this little color show. At the time, though, you could still see the desktop behind all the flickering. Now the computer doesn't seem to even boot. If I have to fly to the states to fix this, I'd love to not have to haul the whole machine, so if we can get this down to a couple likely parts that I could travel with, test and replace, that would be great. This is a hardware issue, right? Would video card failure make sense of this AND the failure to boot? AND if I do replace it, is the ATI Radeon HD 5770 Graphics Upgrade Kit still the ticket? If you help me, you'll be helping a lot of Haitians too, as I use this computer for humanitarian work with the Apparent Project. Help me Obi Geeks, you're my only hope!

Okay, so after doing all of the above, the computer still takes between 40 seconds and 1 minute or so to boot up, and the VersionCue messages still appear. However I discovered that the "kdcmond cannot retrieve..." messages disappeared after I disabled my ethernet connections. So at least I know that that had nothing to do with the extended boot-up time.
I have heard that the more RAM you have, the longer it takes to boot due to the RAM count. Since I have 10 GB, maybe this is why?
I've included the most recent Console messages below:
22/4/08 9:56:16 AM com.apple.launchctl.System[2] launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd: /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist
22/4/08 9:56:16 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.adobe.versioncueCS3) Unknown key: ServiceDescription
22/4/08 9:56:16 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.cups.cups-lpd) Unknown key: SHAuthorizationRight
22/4/08 9:56:16 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.cups.cupsd) Unknown key: SHAuthorizationRight
22/4/08 9:56:16 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.ntp.ntpd) Unknown key: SHAuthorizationRight
22/4/08 9:56:39 AM com.apple.SystemStarter[28] Starting Aladdin USB daemon
22/4/08 9:56:39 AM org.ntp.ntpd[25] Error : nodename nor servname provided, or not known
22/4/08 9:56:39 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.UserEventAgent-LoginWindow[74]) Exited: Terminated
22/4/08 9:56:39 AM com.apple.launchctl.Aqua[90] launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd: /etc/machinit_peruser.d/com.adobe.versioncueCS3.monitor.plist
22/4/08 9:56:42 AM com.apple.launchd[82] (0x1011e0.VersionCueCS3monitor) Failed to check-in!

Mac Pro cold boot failure rate at 50%

I have a Mac Pro dual 2.8 ghz quad core, circa 2008. Recently, I have been required to depress the power button to end a failed cold boot, then press again to boot, usually with success.
I do hear a chime, but in the failed situation, it never progresses to the login screen.
I've reset the pram a few times, this doesn't seem to fix anything, as the system always boots if you try enough times (knock on wood).
I've verified the s.m.a.r.t. status and the disk, it all reports back as fine.
I am writing this post from a "safe boot" hope to see if that works on the next cold boot.
Other posts on this forum suggest it may be a weak pram battery so I will try that, the computer is getting on in years. However a similar post on this forum was marked as answered because the problem reported stated it did not chime from the external speakers. I don't care about that! So here's a new thread about documenting and hopefully solving the actual problem.

I have a Mac Pro dual 2.8 ghz quad core, circa 2008. Recently, I have been required to depress the power button to end a failed cold boot, then press again to boot, usually with success.
Every hard restart freeze, and can guarantee you end up with
corrupt caches, corrupt file system, corrupt directory.
Safe Boot is not effective in such cases, fsck from single user mode has a better chance.
Booting from another hard drive, install your bought copy of Alsoft Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory (it has deep scavenge files also).
The longer you continue to do just Safe Boot and continue using it, the more trouble and less likelihood of being able to repair the drive.
SMART is not smart enough, it tells you about the past, not what could likely happen, or if you have had bad sectors and I/O errors.
Have bootable backup clones and a drive that is a clean Apple OS and drivers that isn't used except for repairs and maintenance. Don't rely on just Apple Disk Repair.

Mac Pro [2006] startup failure

I have a Mac Pro 2.0 Ghz system which will not power up correctly. I have browsed various topics here and searched using google in the hope of finding an answer. Some of this has been helpful and I am now at the stage of replacing either the logic board or the power supply using spare parts from another chassis. Unfortunately the status of these parts is also unknown. I don't want to swap parts from my one working system and risk ending up with three dead machines!
Anyway I have tried the SMC reset procedures, reset the RTC and replaced the battery, changed RAM riser cards and so forth to no avail. The situation still is that the machine responds to power button presses with a slight "click", the front-panel LED glows steadilly and the fans run but accelerate to very high speed over a minute or so after applying power.
The onboard diagnostic LEDs are all extinguished and pressing the diagnostics switch results in only LED1 [trickle power] lighting up. No LED's are illuminated on the RAM risers or graphics card.
There is no system chime.
Keyboard appears dead but the mouse will light up if plugged into a USB port on the chassis instead of one of the ports on the keyboard.
My spare logic board has no CPUs installed and so it will be a major job to do the changeover.
Questions then are:
Is there enough info here to say positively whether it is a PSU or a logic board problem?
Are there other possibilities? Thermal sensors? GPU? Cabling faults?
Is there any way to test a logic board or PSU in isolation from a complete system? Can the logic board be tested without CPUs installed?
Any help would be appreciated.

We have a 2.66 MacPro 1,1 still running fine at present, the original graphics card was replaced by Apple as part of a known issue. This was over 4 years ago, close to the end of the cutoff period for the known issue IIRC.
I'd suggest you contact Apple & see if you can sweet talk them into doing something about the graphics card, even if it's just arranging a better price on a replacement. I recollect at the time of the exchange Apple was switching cards based on the installed OS. Having 10.6 installed meant we got a NVIDIA 8800GT, earlier OS's meant other cards were offered instead. I think it came with a NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT (but I could be wrong - ask me to dig out details if you want to know for sure).
P.S.
Assuming the disk doesn't contain your user data, shutdown & remove your second HD to see if it runs any better, I find that the OS will wait for what feels like a lifetime when requesting data from a disk that has gone to sleep. SSD's change your perception, booting from one will freshen up the Mac, but won't fix the no graphics at boot issue, sorry.

2006 Mac Pro Cold Boot Failure

Hi all,
I have problems with 2006 Mac Pro. It fails cold boot at 100%, first thing in the morning only. So I'm seeking expert advice.
The spec is,
Xeon 5355 2.66GHz x2 (Octo cores)
ATI Radeon 5770(Apple Genuine)
8GB Memory(4x1GB kingston, 4x1GB OWC)
500GBx2 1TBx2 HDDs
I disassembled and cleaned PSU and Fans, reapplying thermal pastes on CPUs and North Bridge a month ago.
Then I booted, system froze at desktop, so I shut it down, reset PRAM & SMC. it booted normally but the upper riser card wasn't detected at all. I cleaned the slot contact and reseated DIMM modules. It was detected after that.
Everything worked fine for a few days but then I got random kernel panics, reseated RAM, reinstalled Snow Leopard but still got random kernel panics. Then ran AHT for a couple of hours and got an error code 4MEM/6....
I contacted OWC and they sent me a new set of memory modules. While waiting for the replacement, no kernel panics at all but DVD drive died as well as IDE cable, so I replaced both.
I got the replacement RAM but past a week, MP fails cold boot every morning. Below is what's happening...
(1) With Kingston Memory, CPU B error LED is lit, I press SYS_RST, one of DIMM LED is then lit (always DIMM A1). Or sometimes, Power-LED is blinking.
(2) With OWC memory, boots normally, then kernel panic within a few minutes.
(3) With OWC memory, CPU B error LED is lit, I press SYS_RST, one of DIMM LED is then lit (always DIMM B1)
*(1) with new and old riser cards
*(3) after replaced 2 riser cards
Replacing riser cards didn't help. After these happen, I shut down by pressing power button for seconds and it boots normally without a hitch. Never get kernel panics nor system freeze. It means when it warms up, MP just works just like it should.
Replaced so far,
-- IDE cable (Apple Genuine)
-- DVD drive (Optiarc AD-7200A)
-- 4GB (1GBx4) OWC memory
-- RTC battery CR2032
-- 2 riser cards
Is the logic board dead or PSU or memory modules are still bad?
Any ideas?
Thanks

I have a Mac Pro dual 2.8 ghz quad core, circa 2008. Recently, I have been required to depress the power button to end a failed cold boot, then press again to boot, usually with success.
Every hard restart freeze, and can guarantee you end up with
corrupt caches, corrupt file system, corrupt directory.
Safe Boot is not effective in such cases, fsck from single user mode has a better chance.
Booting from another hard drive, install your bought copy of Alsoft Disk Warrior to rebuild the directory (it has deep scavenge files also).
The longer you continue to do just Safe Boot and continue using it, the more trouble and less likelihood of being able to repair the drive.
SMART is not smart enough, it tells you about the past, not what could likely happen, or if you have had bad sectors and I/O errors.
Have bootable backup clones and a drive that is a clean Apple OS and drivers that isn't used except for repairs and maintenance. Don't rely on just Apple Disk Repair.

Mac Pro ML Installation Failure

I recently bought ML, dowloaded and ran it. The installer informed me my mac (Early 2009 MacPro 4,1) would restart automatically. After a brief wait my mac did restart but all I was presented with was a grey screen and a circle with a line through it on (prohibition sign) with a spinning circle below it that you get at startup and shutdown time. I left it for about 20 minutes before deciding nothing much more was going to happen. I tried restarting my mac but just got the same screen again. I had backed everything up beforehand so I should be able to restore the backup to at least get things back up and running again on Lion. Does anyone have any suggestions? Has anyone had the same thing happen? This is the first installer I have had to fail despite using macs for many years.

Update - I created a USB installation stick for Mountain Lion. Mac starts from stick OK but does not find either of the two internal hard drives I have. Installer then aborts with a message saying something along the lines of Unable to install due to error. Please Reinstall.

Mac Pro 2008 startup failure

I've replaced failed logic board in my Mac Pro 2008, but it's still not working.
When I press power button, all fans spins, GPU fan spins, but there is no chime and display.
DIAG LED shows only yellow STBY and green PWRG.
Please help !

FBDIMMs
They age, stress, heat fatigue.
You just need to use RMA and warranty once you know which pairs.
And you should be seeing errors or wrong amount or something in Memory tab in System Profile.
Apple Hardware Test will spot parity error DIMMs and some hardware issues with RAM or Risers
Rember can try to look for errors but harder with ECC.
Don't. You can end up with corrujpt files, corrupt system, corrupt directory.
All of which takes more time to find and correct.
And you may need to do a clean install and go from there.
FBDIMMs should have lifetime warranty and buy from a reputable Mac source (Crucial, OWC, Kingston etc) that says "Mac Pro certified"

Mac Pro power supply failure

Anyone have any luck repairing A 2008 Mac Pro power supply? There are two fried resistors on the board and would like to save the 300 USD for a new supply.

Macitguy.com,
Image was not taken at starting, but to be sure here under are values taken 30 mn after starting with antivirus scanning from the start:
http://peloche.smugmug.com/photos/472815384_tAmam-X3.jpg
My MacPro is 2006 model 4 cores.
AMHA MacPro cooling system is (almost) like this:
http://peloche.smugmug.com/photos/93683908_t22JU-L.jpg
If I were you I'll check that nothing slows airflow around DVD location and I'll install Fan control to increase others fan speed (orange and red airflows on the drawing, mines are running at 1500/1600 rpm) this should help the whole system (AMHA), it doesn't cost to make a test.
Peloche,

Mac Pro HDD bay failure

I have an early 2008 mac pro quad core 2.8, all was fine until i tried to install windows 7 on the drive in bay 3, I never got past formatting the drive, upon restart that drive did not mount and did not appear in disc utility, i had to remove place in to bay 4, erase and all was fine with the drive, except when i put it back in to bay 3 it will not mount and does not appear in disc utility as before, i have tried other working drives in the same bay with the same result, all drive work in bay 4 no problem, I have reset PRAM and tried SMC reset, well followed the intructions for SMC reset but no idea if it worked or not.
Any ideas?
Thanks all

Windows tends to do better for some in #1 or 2
run AHT Apple Hardware Test
more likely to be motherboard, or loose cable back in there if not the drive
remove your drives and just use Windows to format, initialize, even chkdsk for bad blocks
and, drive vendor's Windows or linux tool is best way to certify drive functioning, WD Lifeguard is what I use and even spotted cable issue as well as better job mapping out weak sectors,

Mac Pro Power Up failure - Mac Pro goes on and off

Since few months my Mac Pro first generation (2x 2.66 GHz Dual core 8 GB RAM with ATI Radeon XT1900X 512 Mb video card) frequently does not start up. When pushing the power button it starts up and in few seconds turns off again. I have reset the SMC, done a hardware test for RAM etc. The machine has had a dure test at a service provider but the problem was not found.
Few weeks ago the problem began again and sometimes the Mac Pro starts up normal and sometimes the problem occurs again. And sometimes the Mac Pro goes of spontaniously. Can this be the Video card causing this problem? The RAM seems to be OK, cause I replaced the 4x 2xGB DIMMS with the older 2x 512 MB DIMMS that came with the Mac Pro and the same problem occurs.
Has anyone has this problem and/or knows a solution?

I just starting having this problem today. I turned on my Mac Pro this morning and after a few seconds it shut down and then restarted. It kept doing that so I finally unplugged the computer. Prior to today the computer would sometimes shutdown or restart on it's own but I could usually get it boot back up and was able to use the computer. It's still unplugged and I'll leave it that way until I get home from work today. I did open up the case and blasted out as much of the dust that's built up with a can of compressed air. I've read about resetting the SMC but can I do that if the computer keeps restarting after a few seconds? I have AppleCare for the Mac Pro should I just set up an appointment and take it in? I worried that it may be an issue with the power supply. Any suggestions? I appreciate the assistance!!!
Thanks!!

Mac Pro hard drive failure how to recover data

I have a 2007 Mac Pro with four hard drives in it. One of my drives had a message the other day indicating I/0 error, it came back several times, and now I don't see the hard drive on my desktop.
Is there a way I can recover the data from this drive?

ALSOFT DISK WARRIOR - their techs have helped even where a drive was unable to mount.
a disk to disk sector copy can be of use $500 range
"Disk drive recovery" is always a hot topic on http://www.macintouch.com
At leas DR3 is demo to see if it can find files.
SoftRAID http://www.softriad.com can often take over and provide the ability - email their support, the have a demo, program is about $140

Choosing specs for a mac pro

Hello all,
I've posted this question a few times in the past and am still a bit unsure of what specs i should go with. With the student/teacher discount coming to an end soon, I thought I'd give it one more go. I am also curious how the new mac pro might affect my decision. I will not be needing a 12 core, but did this new product affect the specs for the lower models?
I am looking for a computer that will help me run my small business and keep my art portfolio organized. I'm willing to spend around $3000 and am also willing to use another source to buy less expensive parts to install myself.
My concerns are that it needs to run pretty smoothly with multiple programs open, no overheating, plenty of space for file storage and application support.
Ideally this computer will be my work horse for many years to come.
The programs that would most likely be open in conjunction with one another would be a combination of the following...mozilla, itunes, adobe bridge, dreamweaver, illustrator, and photoshop.
Specifically, i'll be using it for...
building a few websites
managing my small business
large photo file editing
keeping business files, artist receipts, etc
cataloging my art portfolio (large photo files)
storing photos, music, and short videos
graphic design
infrequent film editing
infrequent sound editing
The programs i'll be using:
CS5 (mostly photoshop, illustrator, bridge, dreamweaver)
iphoto
itunes
maybe minimal finalcut/soundtrack pro
maybe minimal aftereffects
I received this response the first time I posted this question and have found it to be very helpful, thanks bill! I'm wondering if anyone else would like to expand on it or perhaps offer other options for my situation. Thank you all very much, any advice is appreciated.
"My advice would be to buy the standard configuration 2.66GHz Quad Core (i.e. 3 x 1GB RAM, 640GB hard drive) from the Apple store, with the exception of the graphics card which you can buy as a CTO option for $200.00. It is well worth the upgrade from the GT120 - I know, because I upgraded myself last November after using a GT120 for 4 months.
With regard to the memory, if you can afford it now, buy 4 x 4GB from OWC now. If not, I would suggest that you buy 2 x 4GB now, and then add another 2 x 4GB in the future. 16GB of RAM is a much better option than 8GB for your requirements. You can sell the 3 x 1GB RAM to OWC in "part exchange", and there would be little difference in price for 2 x 4GB to the CTO option of 4 x 2GB.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1066-memory
Instead of buying 2 x 1TB hard drives as a CTO option, you could purchase 2 x 1.5TB or 2 x 2TB HDDs for less money, and you would still have the 640GB. Spare drives are always useful. I use my original 640GB as a spare emergency system boot drive (OS and applications) in an external enclosure.
Another alternative is to wait a few more weeks, in case the rumours of the introduction of a new Mac Pro range in June have any foundation."

That advice looks pretty sound to me. What I would add is for internal drives you need one for storing your working files (better not to have those on your system drive but not really a big deal). And one for backup with Time Machine. What I also have is a separate external drive to clone my system so I have 2 backups.
And I have a partition on one of the internal drives that is used ONLY as a Photoshop scratch disk. This is by far the fastest solution unless you want to create a raid system. Never have your scratch disk on the same drive as your system drive, not even as a partition. You only need around 500 MB for this and it's best if that partition is dedicated only as a scratch disk.
You can create all of this with partitions for some of it, no need for lots of drives, except use different drives for Time Machine and your clone disk so both can't go out at the same time. I think for speed purposes that the scratch disk and Time Machine should be on internal drives, but Firewire 800 is pretty fast for an external.
Other than that your biggest concern is ram. Get as much as you can afford because that will determine your speed more than anything else.
I was working on a 4 year old iMac, which is a pretty good machine, but the limited 3 gb ram was causing problems because I have Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign open all the time along with Mail, Chrome and a couple of others. When I got a Mac pro last year to replace it I got 8 gb of ram and the speed has been incredible.
Kevin
Edit: Forgot to mention that you shouldn't buy the hard drives or ram from Apple, they are way too expensive, get the minimum you can from Apple then get new stuff, OWC is a good source.
Message was edited by: Kevin Horn

12 core Mac Pro does not improve render time over iMac quad core

I'm rendering the same composition independently on two computers and they are basically rendering at the same rate, which is slightly better than 1 frame per second.
The project settings and preferences are identical in each instance (with the exception of memory and multiprocessing, which I have experimented with ad nauseum). The composition includes no motion blur, no effects, just a couple of layers of chroma keyed .mov files (using keylight 2.0) and some still images. Neither machine is running any other applications, except occasionally Google Chrome, which seems to have no effect on performance.
Both systems are running the latest version of After Effects CC (2014) and using the Classic 3D renderer.
System 1 MAC PRO:
Mac Pro 12 core 2.7 GHz Intel Xeon E5
dual AMD FirePro 500D 3072 MB GPUs
32 GB RAM
OS X 10.9.4
System 2 iMAC:
iMac quad core 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
AMD Radeon HD 6750M 512 MB GPU
8 GB RAM
OS X 10.9.3
As you can see, system 1 is vastly more powerful, and yet no combination of memory/multiprocessing settings can get the system to render faster than system 2.
It doesn't seem to matter how much or little RAM I reserve for other applications (I have settled on 4 GB), or the number of CPUs I reserve for After Effects. The one setting that has improved performance is turning OFF render multiple frames. And even then it only brings the performance of the Mac Pro up to par with the iMac. I have cleared my cache, rebooted the computer, and read everything I can find online regarding the optimization of render settings.
Here's a comparison of the respective CPU Loads:
iMac
Mac Pro
With such a low CPU load, After Effects is obviously not utilizing the resources available to it on the Mac Pro. What a waste.
Can anyone help?

There's plenty of debate about the new Mac Pro vs a kitted out iMac. Benchmarks show that some iMac After Effects processing can actually be faster than on a Mac Pro, depending on the content and some other factors. If you're using software that has been optimised for the Mac Pro's GPU-centric architecture, like Final Cut Pro X, you will see great benefits.
mac pro vs imac
In my own facility recently we opted out of purchasing Mac Pros this year, and bought top-end iMacs instead. The benefit to cost ratio simply didn't make sense for us right now. Mac Pros are awesome machines, but a significant component of their cost is the dual GPUs, which are simply no benefit to After Effects.
Reports say that the After Effects engineers are working on a major revamp of the After Effects processing system, so I'm betting you will realise far greater benefits from your Mac pro in coming AE versions. For now, you may continue to see performance that is not spectacularly better than a souped-up iMac, depending on the type of processing involved.
I've seen a few benchmarks that suggest the 8 core systems give better bang-for-buck than the 12 cores. Try reducing your processors to 8 in After Effects and see if it makes a difference. With 8 cores, allocate 3GB of RAM per core to leave some RAM for the OS.

Got Quicktime Pro with my Mac Pro, where do I find my registration code?

When I bought my Mac Pro two years ago it came with QT Pro. I've now reinstalled my computer, how do I get my QT to be Pro again?

QuickTime Pro has never been included with any Mac. It might have been activated if you bought the Mac with Final Cut Pro/Studio pre-installed, though. If that's the case, reinstall FCP/FCS and it should reactivate QT Pro.

Mac Pro 3-year failure

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