Mac Pro power issue...

Wondered if anyone else had this issue. I have a Mac Pro from mid 2008. Recently, it has done the following:
- From a 'cold' start, it will power up for 3-4 secs and then power off again. It will not reach the grey screen.
- It will only fully power up after about 30-40 attempts...
Also, it will now sometimes just power off completely without warning.
Anyone else had these issues? It doesn't seem to be a graphics card issue.

Some more info on this problem, hopefully someone can help.
More system details:
Early 2008 Mac Pro
No extra memory or internal installations - just 2gb ram.
I found another thread which describes my problem completely....
"Problem 1: In the morning when I turn it on, on some occasions it will power on for 5 or so seconds, then power right back off again. Sometimes this happens after 5, 10 or even 20 seconds (right in the middle of OS X or Windows boot). The only thing I note is that if it can get as far as the boot selector (hold alt at boot) screen, it won't cut out at that point, only sometimes after I wait a moment then select a boot option. This can sometimes happen 10 or 20 times in a row before it will eventually turn on and function normally.
Problem 2: Random power cut off, sometimes at idle, sometimes while browsing, or using any other app. I can't pin it on any one particular function. I know it's not a temperature problem, I have temp monitors on my menu bar and as far as I can see it's been fairly stable in that regard. Most of the time, I can power up the computer again but very occasionally it will revert to what I described in problem 1.
I have run the apple hardware test, with no errors being produced, and have had the local apple reseller/service centre take a look, with their tech reporting no issues. (He referred to something called ARD being run on a cycle of 20 or 30 times with nothing indicating a problem) I've taken off every non essential piece of hardware, tried with only the stock ram - and the newer ram to no avail of my issues. The only thing that I can still suspect myself is a power issue, however there is another PC in the room that has not had any issues what-so-ever."
Needless to say I'll be soooooo disappointed if this 'top-end' machine has only got hardware to last 2.5 years. My pitifully power-less Dell has lasted longer.
Any advice please...?

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Model Name:          Mac Pro
Model Identifier:          MacPro3,1
Processor Name:          Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed:          2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors:          2
Total Number Of Cores:          8
L2 Cache (per processor):          12 MB
Memory:          4 GB
Bus Speed:          1.6 GHz
Boot ROM Version:          MP31.006C.B05
SMC Version (system):          1.25f4
I recently moved my MacPro to a new building. Almost immediately it started taking a long time to boot. Twice it hung on the blue screen for approximately 10 minutes before continuing to the login screen. Problems were intermittent, sometimes it would boot fine. Then it started having trouble powering on at all. It would click and the light would turn on and off in less than 5 seconds. I took it to a different building: no powering on. I took it twice to the Apple store for the same problem, it turned on both times so I had to take it back with no help. Back at the original building, the computer turns on sometimes after leaving it unplugged overnight. I suspected an issue with the power in the building so I plugged it into a UPS. Initially it was only on a Surge Protector. On one recent occasion I accidentally nudged it with my knee and it powered down and back up. On another occasion I was sitting still watching a video and it powered down and back up with no intervention.
This will not reproduce at the Apple store. Each time it is there it has booted up perfectly using both my power cord and Apple’s power cord. Don’t know what to do next.
Any thoughts on what to try before replacing power supply and power cable? Is it possible this is not a power-related issue?

make sure to use something in 1000VA or better for your UPS and that it can support your system. May seem like $200 is a lot but then they work and give you adequate shutdown or to ride out a 5 minute power issue.
UPS
http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP1500PFCLCD-Compatible-1500VA-Tower/dp/B00429N 19W/
you don't need to nor is it that effective to leave unplugged over night or something.
hit the power on for 10 seconds while every cord and device is unplugged though.
Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

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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
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AMHA MacPro cooling system is (almost) like this:
http://peloche.smugmug.com/photos/93683908_t22JU-L.jpg
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Peloche,

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Mac Pro Display Issue - Unexpectedly Sleeps and Freezes
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At first I thought this was related to Chrome, and switched to Firefox, but the computer is still having the same issue. I have to shut down and restart each time it gets stuck.
I even went into preferences and changed the energy saver settings to "Never" allow display or harddrive to sleep. But this problem is stil happening.
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I cleaned out my mac with compressed air, it was dusty, but the display flickering happened again.
So I followed your advice and installed:
Temperature Monitor
http://www.bresink.de/osx/TemperatureMonitor.html
Which showed that my memory module 1B and 2B were 70 - 75'C(160 -167'F). There was no reading for the graphic card so I couldn't tell if that was over heating.
Then I installed:
smc fan controller
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I even changed this ram's placement and put it in different slots.This ram was the same temperature in the new placements.
Also this is the kingston 2gb ram without heatsinks. Ive used it for 1.5 yrs, and this is the first time its giving me these problems.
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Power Usage of Mac Pro It requires 410 watts to start up, idles at 300 watts, and peaks at 430 watts when running Doom 3, the most demanding power wise of the ten apps we tried.
The Mac Pro had 16GB of RAM, four internal hard drives, and a Radeon X1900 XT. We're confident the Mac Pro's 980 watt power supply can handle just about everything you can do to upgrade or expand a Mac Pro.
Mac Pro: Power consumption and thermal output (BTU) information
Update: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304378
Mac Pro (Late 2006) Quad Core 2.66 Ghz Mac Pro
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Notes
*Power consumption data (Watts) is measured from the wall power source and includes all power supply and system losses.
Additional correction is not needed.
*"CPU Max" is defined as running a compute-intensive test application that maximizes processor usage and therefore power consumption.
*These numbers reflect a 23° C (73.4° F) ambient running environment. Increased ambient temperatures will require faster fan speeds which will increase power consumption.
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Go to any computer store or many big box stores have them. It is a standard computer card which is used on PCs and computer peripherals. APlle will also sell you one

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I think we may have traded posts in another thread about this, but just confirming: you still have the kernel-panic-on-wake issue even after upgrading to 10.5.2? That cleared it up for me.
If you do ... do you by chance have anything plugged into the MacBook Pro's left USB port when it crashes? You might want to try leaving that port free when the machine is sleeping. A colleague swears that the left port is slightly underpowered, leading to all kinds of USB oddities when used, including kernel panics.

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Mac Pro will not boot. It powers up to the grey Apple logo screen. The progress circle spins for about 3 seconds, then powers itself off.
This past week I came back from two weeks off. The first morning back I noticed my Mac was sluggish at times and freezing for a few seconds here and there. When Time Machine backups would kick in, the whole system would be unresponsive for minutes at a time. After turning off all other equipment in my office, I could detect a tell-tale "click click, spin" type noise coming from one of my two internal drives (one for OS and a second for backups).
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Here is my own "cookie cutter" template to this type of problem.
Insure your UPS is working properly and that you have 1300VA to start with.
Run Apple Hardware Test of course.
CCC has been updated so make sure latest (it auto checks probably already).
Do you have Windows? run diagnostics from there, much better.
I settled on WD drives and use WD Diagnostic and has saved a drive.
Avoid Barracudas, seems even their 1TB is also suffering early failures (the 1.5TB was suffering from firmware problem).
Check for reviews and drive upgrade DB on AccelerateYourMac.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/
I know the F1 got a lot of early praise but they aren't compatible with Apple Pro RAID card and may have other issues.
If you want a fast low-cost drive, WD Cavair 640GB $69.
http://www.barefeats.com/harper14.html
Hitachi E7K1000: http://techreport.com/articles.x/16130/10
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-terabyte-1tb,2077-8.html
I have seen more than a couple of similar stories from people going away for 1-2 weeks and coming home to system that won't work properly. Hopefully people shutdown and unplug, or shutdown and have UPS, but it is strange to say the least.
Resetting SMC is a good idea but best done with 2008 model by leaving it unplugged for a full night 8-12 hrs. and not just 5 minutes. contrary to Apple tech article. For yours, there is a small physical button accessed by pulling drive tray #4 (easier to see if it is on its side and you have flashlight!)
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1806
http://www.apple.com/support/macpro/

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

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2) Upgrade the Mac Pro graphics to either the dual 5770 or the single 5870
3) Replace the large dell monitor with an Apple Cinema Display
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Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

That is not quite right. Strictly speaking, it is not three dual-Link adapters that are required, but all adapters must be ACTIVE, POWERED Adapters.
Apple's solution requires their Daul-Link adapters because those are the ones with a USB lead to pick up even more power.
Your initail query tlaks of wanting to connect three monitors, but you have only provided connection details for two.

Mac Pro Beachball issue...

I have a Mac Pro 3.33ghz 6-core with 12GB ram. Also have 4 WD 2TB Black Caviar drives (1 in each bay slot). But I have had only one problem with this computer since the very beginning of getting it. Even when I had only bay 1 filled with the Hitachi 2TB HD that came with the Mac Pro, I would notice that maybe about 1/3rd of the time I would turn the computer on, it would power up, allow me to sign in to my account name and once I got to the desktop, it would either be sluggish to load and the beachball would appear and keep spinning (and I would have to hold the power button to restart) - OR - the desktop would fully load and be ready to go, but when I clicked on the finder and brought up the finder window which lists my drives and home folder, etc - if I clicked on any of the other HD`s in the list, it would again pop up the beachball for maybe 2 minutes and then it would show me the folders found in the finder window for the HD selected.
Apple was having me run disk utility to repair permissions, which would work for maybe first 3 start-ups but then back to same problem. I ended up adding the other HD`s and switching the HD that came with the Mac Pro to a WD Black Caviar thinking it would solve the problem, perhaps. But it still does it.
Again, it`s not every time. But I feel between 30-50% is an awful lot of time for this computer to behave so strange. And keep in mind this is just when the computer powers on, so it`s not like I am running every 5 Adobe programs simultaneously and expecting the computer to run lightning fast. It is just upon power up that it happens, when nothing else is running at all. I have even installed Applejack to clear out the caches from time to time, and again - it seems to solve the problem, but more like putting a bandaid on it - not a true fix.
I have no clue what the problem could be. I am in Japan and unfortunately their solution for everything is to send the computer back and off no replacement or temp computer while they keep it for 10 days or more. I know it is NOT the hard drives because I have had great luck with these drives in the past and present. But somewhere within my Mac Pro something is making it sluggish either during startup or upon wanting to check folders in my HD`s thru the finder window.
Any ideas? And as for maybe the hard drives - all 4 are 2tb size, and all currently have about 1.5 - 1.7 tb empty space left. So it`s not that, either. And I think the amount of ram I have is plenty for what I do - MS Office, email, iTunes and photo work (itunes and photo storage on the drives).
I am totally confused why this is. Computer is not even 6 months old.

I had the same issue with the periodic beach ball. Lots of ram and 4 7200 rpm 2TB Seagates. It drove me nuts. I tried Kappy's approach which is the correct one with limited success.
Because I am a tinkerer and wanted speed/redundancy, first I tried using software raid 0 on two of the drives. That cured most of the beachballs. So, I liked the raid 0 but was scared of the software raid and data loss.
Then I added a Caldigit Raid Card in Raid 5. The machine is like lighting now and safer. No beachballs and lighting fast. Somehow the disk combo/controller appears to have been slowing me down. I have no idea why, but that's what did it for me.
Unfortunately you cannot move this card to 2009 or later MP's unless you use external raid. It will only do internal on 2008's. This is a very expensive solution but it worked for me. Since I can't even contemplate replacing this machine since it is so quick, the raid setup cost is partially offset by the number of more years I can keep my mac pro.
If you have the nerve to try raid 0 and keep good backups, that may work for you too.

Mac Pro Sleep Issue

Hi, my Mac Pro apparently goes to sleep whenever I leave it for a significant amount of time, i.e. to go to sleep at night. When I come back to it, I hit the spacebar to wake it up. The computer makes noise like it is waking, the screen comes on long enough for me to open an application like Entourage then it immediately shuts back down. In the beginning when this problem happened, I could touch the space bar and it would just come on, now after so many times of that happening, the problem has graduated.
Now nothing works to wake it back up. I know that it hasn't shut down because the light is on on the computer. However, the keyboard doesn't work at this time, the mouse has no effect, nothing will bring my display back up. I even touch the power button on the monitor and the monitor appears to be working properly, but it cannot show me my display screen. The only things that fixes the problem is if I hold the computers power button until it powers off then power it on again.
The fact that it wasn't doing this when I first got it tells me there is something seriously wrong with it. Does anyone out there know why this is happening? I'm afraid that eventually one day I will hold the power button and power it off and it won't come back on.
BTW, I searched the discussion forums and didn't find the exact problem discussed.

Hey Will. It's interesting you are having the same issue. May I ask what generation your mac pro is? Mine is a 2006.
As I said in another thread, I have been in a game of troubleshooting phone tag with an apple specialist for about a week and a half now with almost nothing to show for it. Today he suggested I try plugging my computer in without going through a surge protector. Although the protector I have is brand new, I tried anyway and the machine still shutdown on a wake attempt when plugged directly into a different outlet.
Like you, I am getting VERY fed up with this issue. Although it's intermittent, it's serious enough to cause significant problems and it's not something I am willing to live with.
My instincts say the problem is with the power supply or possibly the SMC on the logic board. However, until apple is willing to fix the machine, I seem to be stuck trying to prove to them there is actually an issue. All in all it's shutdown on wake at least 20 times now, which should be more than enough to warrant a service visit in my opinion.
The truly discouraging thing is I submitted the console logs (the platform failure ones) to the tech specialist and he forwarded them to the apple engineers. I had high hopes the seemingly important logs might shed some light on the cause and therefore allow a fix to occur. Instead, when I spoke with him today, he said the messages didn't indicate a cause of the issue. (Again, this is according to the engineer who looked at the logs.)
So, as it stands, I am being told to try all sots of stuff to narrow down the root of the issue. I even tried a re installation of snow leopard to no avail.
I'll post again if anything new comes up.

MAC Pro hardware issue

Mac Pro starts up and shuts down before loading the login screen. Any ideas what could cause this? It's about 4 years old and never gave any problems before.

Sounds like there is a rash and run on 2008's with issues like this now.
And SMC RESET doesn't help?
And you have backup system disks?
You or I or we should collect all the threads about this and 2008 and general maintenance and troubleshooting steps.
Whether PSU, PRAM, dust, issue with incoming power that over time affects those PSUs, or even faulty graphics (2600XT, 4870, other?) and FBDIMMs do stress and age from heat when not kept cooled to below 70*C.
General Helphttp://pondini.org
Metro Vacuum ED500 DataVac 500-Watt 0.75-HP Electric Duster 120-Volt
www.amazon.com/Metro-Vacuum-ED500-500-Watt-Electric/dp/B001J4ZOAW/

Mac Pro Power Overload? 4890

So I recieved my 4890 today and made it work fine in my Mac Pro Win & OSX with 2nd superdrive as power source.
Then I went ahead and installed a Accelero Twin turbo cooler. I took power from the second superdrive for the cooler in addition to powering the card itself.
Upon boot I had no display, no fan movement for 5 sec then all the fans in my mac pro started climbing in speed and stopping on 100% like a turbo jet.
So black screen and no matter what card I use (4890, 8800gt, 7300gt) with superdrive power disconnected, still black display and full tilt fans.
Is my power supply broken? did I somehow overload it?
im guessing this is a issue for my apple store but in a last attempt on saving alot of cash and 2weeks without computer I am asking you guys.
mac pro 2006 btw

First off, the 2006 mac pro PSU is 1000 watts; it would take a lot more than that to overload your psu. Moreover the 4890 is more power efficient anyway, so it would consume less than say a 4870.
It could be though, that you are overloading the power dedicated for sata. Why are you connecting the 4890 through the superdrive power anyway? Use the aux 6 pin pcie connectors. The optical drive power should only be used if you +have to+, like if you're running a crossfire setup, and even at that it's "iffy" (although someone on macrumors has a stable crossfire setup going like that).
The fact that this has somehow "bricked" the system, even after disconnecting everything and reinstalling an apple oem card, though worries me.
Using a 4890 under OSX requires messing natit.kext files, etc. something a lot different from just flashing a card. In this sense flashing is a lot cleaner.
I wonder too though if you should take this to the apple store or not. They might not even help you, and you'll waste a trip of lugging a boulder around. That's the one problem with flashing, hacking, etc. you're on your own if things go south.
On the brightside though, have you inquired macrumors members about this. Throw up a post there, if anyone can help they can.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=661681

Mac Pro power issue...

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