Mac Pro wont boot to logon screen
Help!!
A couple of weeks ago, before upgrading to 10.5.7, my screen would freeze like a picture with the mouse cursor able to move but nothing would respond. I generally had to use the main power button at least 5 times before the display would show anything and get to the logon screen. It seemed to happen when moving the mouse cursor to the top right corner of my display, which I use to "Display all windows". I have since updated to 10.5.7 but was still getting the problem. A couple of times the display just shut off on its own, there was a click within the computer then the display went blank. This has happened a few times.
Last night the screen froze again and I tried the usual reboot about 40 times and only a few times got the Grey Apple screen but would not get any further. If I had a blank screen on reboot the hard drive would be spinning at full speed and would not stop until I switched the machine off.
Now it has a mind of its own! If I get to the Grey screen it now has the sun ray symbol going round and sits like that for some minutes then the machine reboots and it goes through this cycle repeatedly on its own!
I can't get it to boot into the logon screen at all now.
I have tried various startup key options to no effect (no response to any startup options including PRAM, SMC, disconnecting all external items etc) and I am now at a loss as to what to do next.
Personally I think I have two problems, one possibly a faulty graphics card and secondly corrupted Operating System software?
Any ideas?
Thanks
Douglas
Hi Peter,
Thank you for your advice. It has taken many reboots to get it to recognise the install disk! Eventually it came up and I ran Disk Utility. It said the drive could not be repaired as Keys were out of order. I managed to install OSX on my second hard drive and I am now copying all the info I need from that drive after which I will reformat it ready for use again.
What a nightmare! Even worse are the negative comments I have read about the Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB Drives as I have 2 installed and also a couple of Lacie External 500GB and 600GB Drives which have also had bad reviews and I did have one fail and have spent years trying to recover 20,000 photos.
So looks like I am heading for another disaster down the line!
Thanks for your help with this one though!
Regards
Douglas
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Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs.
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Step 8
Launch Disk Utility in Recovery mode (see Step 1.) Select your startup volume, then run Repair Disk. If any problems are found, repeat until clear. If Disk Utility reports that the volume can't be repaired, the drive has malfunctioned and should be replaced. You might choose to tolerate one such malfunction in the life of the drive. In that case, erase the volume and restore from a backup. If the same thing ever happens again, replace the drive immediately.
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