More on the G5 Won't boot, no chime, no grey screen issue....

OK, so in the last thread, I had taken it to the apple store, where the g5 (DP 2.5) dutifully started up on their firewire drive, whereupon they declared it a faulty hard drive.
I pressed them pretty hard, but it made sense at the time, and certainly never failed while they were there.
So now I have it back home, a new WD SATA drive installed, and guess what?? same thing... boots, no chime, no power LED, just fans.
I have set/reset the SMU, I have removed everything including the batter (which checks good at 3.7 volts BTW)
Here's the weird part - it seems like once per day (always the first time) I do get one good try out of it. By this I mean, it will chime and at least get to the grey screen, and i can eject a CD. However, up till now I have not been prepared with the right thing to give it. Once that opportunity has passed, its back to the old black screen with no chimes for at least 24 hours.
I don't detect any overheating or that sort of problem - anyone ever seen this - where you can only get one good boot out of it for a day?
Thanks,
adam

Hi gB -
Yes I tried without the cover, to no avail. Ended up taking it back to the apple store today where they now are able to see the problem (with a different monitor).
Their gut instinct is logic board, but I am asking them to do a complete test on it (whatever that means) just to make sure it isn't a flaky leg on the power supply, or a bad cable somewhere. I don't have alot of hope, but I will give it a chance.
If it ends up being procs, board, or both, I will probably sell it for parts and put the money into a new one with warranty etc!
Glad yours is up and running.
Adam

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Thanks very much for the suggestions! I tried your method of booting to the install CD while holding option (alt), and then running Disk Utility to repair the disk and the permissions. Even though it still told me the drive didn't need repairing, there were more permissions that needed repairing when booting this way (as opposed to when booting while holding the C key.)
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I inserted my Snow Leopard install disk and cycled the power, holding downt he C key and I got to the grey screen with the Apple logo in the center of the screen with a little spinning progress indicator. This is what I always get.
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> Mac OS X 10.6: Reinstalling Mac OS X
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I recently purchased a new hard drive to replace the original that came with my Mac Pro 2008. I was able to format the new drive using Disk Utility. I am now at the point where I need to install OS X onto the new drive, but the computer refuses to boot from the disc. The disc is recognized by the computer (I can access the disc and am able to use the BootCamp applications, etc.) but I just get a black screen when trying to boot directly from the disc. The computer boots fine otherwise.
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Clone should be a must and easy to do and learn (learn by doing! 2)
6800 would 'qualify' as 5x70 series flashed etc and same rule: 10.6.5
In the past there was 10.4.6, 10.5.6, but not 10.6.6 - even though strong need for such a DVD.
10.6.8 DVD would be excellent
Lion or ML - buy, download, make an installer flash card would be what I would do at this point.
Then keep both - dual boot as you learn and test and see what ML does and waht you had that required Rosetta to support PowerPC. See www.roaringapps.com about that.
With Carbon Coyp Cloner - was share, now commercial, great utility been around since 10.2.2 at least - this time 2003. 10 yrs.
You can clone the system folders, you can even selectively choose. You can skip copy of most of your home account and do that separately to another drive if you want.
Clone Windows with Paragon or WinClone and use Windows 7 or 8 DVD to do a system repair (automatic) or to edit the BCD file. It can and should - and all you do is boot Windows 7 DVD w/ only the one drive present and go at it. Piece of cake. But yes, Windows gets fussy if you change or remove or move. BCD to the rescue. A proper program for cloning like Paragon's "Clone OS" meant for going from disk drives to SSDs, knows that and how to do it.
Back to how to clone etc:
Clone
Disk utility has RESTORE which will also clone your system but not the Lion Recovery partition. Oddly Apple did not 'endorse' making bootable clone of the system which works too but most choose Carbon Copy Cloner - it works more consistently; it allows for smart update of the backup volume. Both can backup to a sparse disk image if desired.
Using Cloning as a Backup Strategy
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
http://www.bombich.com/software/updates/ccc-3.5.html
OS X Lion Install to Different Drive
How to create an OS X Lion installation disc MacFixIt
Migration Assistant Update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard
http://www.apple.com/support/lion/installrecovery/
Create an OS X Lion Install disc
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20080989-263/how-to-create-an-os-x-lion-ins tallation-disc
How to clone your system:
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone-backup.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone.html
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
http://www.macperformanceguide.com/blog/2012/20120711_2-MacPro-internal-clone-ba ckup.html
The DVD is dependent on your hardware. And your hardware changed. The drivers for the 5780 and 6xxx are bundled in the OS and lacking. Minimum build thing.
Put the new drive anywhere you want. Does not matter. Can move it later. Can be drive bay 0-3 or a Firewire external or under the DVD drive.
When you clone pull the old drive and boot from the newly cloned.
After that keep a backup clone around all the time. Takes less than 10 minutes to do a smart update to copy just the changes to keep it current. So you have working copy of the system. I keep Clone "A" that I keep "as was" the system as of last month or whatever (like 10.7.4 before upgrade to 7.5).
Comes easier after doing it once and have all your ducks in a row.

Macbook pro won't boot, stuck on white apple screen

Noticed today, that my macbook pro won't boot . It gets to the white apple screen with the spinner under the apple logo. It stays like this for a long time without doing anything except spinning.
I've powered down and tried to boot up several times.
I have boot camp and windows on my mac and when the white screen appears, I can press Option to bring up which hard drive and the Windows partition will load without any problems.

Exacty what happens when you try to boot up from the disc that came with your computer? Are you holding down the c key? Have you tried holding down the "option key?" Are you able to run the Hardware Test - Intel-based Macs: Using Apple Hardware Test
Shut down your computer and disconnect all peripherals (keyboard & mouse if pertinent) from your computer. Now reboot.
If the Mac starts up normally, shut it down again and then plug in one of the peripherals (keyboard or mouse first) and start up your computer again. If it does so successfully repeat the process, adding one peripheral at a time until your Mac acts up. At that point, disconnect the last peripheral you added, reboot your Mac and search the peripheral vendor's website for an updated driver.
If no driver exists or the problem remain after installing the new driver, try a different cable or a different port on your Mac.
If none of the above works, again disconnect all peripherals from your Mac, hold down the "shift" key to start up in "Safe Boot" mode.
If the Mac starts up correctly, restart without pressing the "shift" key.
If your computer still does not start up properly, shut it down and restart it while holding down the Apple+Option-P-R keys; keep holding "all 4 keys" down until you hear the startup sound "twice."
If none of the above work Disconnect all peripherals from your computer. Boot from your install disc & run Repair Disk from the utility menu. To use the Install Mac OS X disc, insert the disc, and restart your computer while holding down the C key as it starts up.
Select your language.
Once on the desktop, select Utility in the menu bar.
Select Disk Utility.
Select the disk or volume in the list of disks and volumes, and then click First Aid.
Click Repair Disk.
(If Disk Utility cannot repair, you will need a stronger utility (3rd party) - Diskwarrior or Techtool PRO)
Restart your computer when done.
Repair permissions after you reach the desktop-http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751 and restart your computer.
Remove any 3rd party ram.
Reinstall Lion - This will install a "fresh" copy of Lion without archiving old system files but leaves the rest of your files in place.
If your computer is still under warranty or you have Apple Care, take full advantage of it by letting tech support deal with your problems. It's what you're paying them for.
Out of warranty - take the computer to an Apple store or an AASP. Whichever is more convenient for you.

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