Mac Pro won't boot

I just had the exact problem on my 2006 MacPro 1,1.

I managed to get it to work. The symptoms where almost identical. It would attempt to start, and then just "pop" off again. I took all memory out (except for original ram), my 3 extra hard drives, even the video card, all with the same result.

I ended up taking the "insides" apart and thoroughly cleaning every part. I took the video card fan assembly off, cleaned the heatsink and cooling grid, I took the PSU fan apart, cleaned it. I took the front two fans out and cleaned them, as well as the back fan (by the memory). I also cleaned the cooling grid of the cpu. All these items had layers and layers of dust on them, almost like little blankets. While I had it apart I also replaced the CR2032 memory battery, since it is cheap, and I had read that there could be start-up issues if it was old..

After this, it started like a champ, and it was soooo quiet!!!

Hi There every body, mine from 2011 was dead, some weekends, try to rapair for this time, until i decide to put 3 ATX PSU 20amp in 12v Rail each, one for J1 conector, one for J2 conector and one for J3 Conector the c conecctor use 5vsb 3.3 vsb and PSU-ON and Ground, this mac pros drawn to much current thats the only way to do it satable 3 x 20amp atx PSU, the only thing you miss is the sleep fuction, but you get you $2000 machine back to life, people goes crazy buying used motherboard, Used PSU that have the same problem as original... serach for j1, j2, j3, c pinout take 3 cheap atx psu thats it, J3 goes for hd, pci 6 pin , j2 goes for cpus , j1 goes for pcie, C goes standby power and memory.... waste 1 hour and $60 to bring your mac to life again, you can takeit to apple support they dont get with failure and take your money, here in my countre apple service take from me a video card replacement hd 2900, they say they replaced psu to, i spend more than $600 for nothing, google you will see tons of people having the same problem, and buying on ebay a used PSU it wont work they all have se same problem in short time you will get failure again, is a PSU problem....

I've got the same problem (early 2008 Mac Pro 8 core 2.8ghz). It boots up if the power cable has been removed for sometime, and runs fine. The diagnostic led's on the logic board do not indicate any problem, but for a few weeks now I have found the computer off after leaving it sleeping over night. This seemed to happen more often, and it would take longer for the chimes to sound after turning it on. I've ordered a psu, so fingers crossed :-)

I fitted a replacement power supply a few days and it has fixed the problem. So I would say that if you have the same issues as Hitcher, it's the power supply.

I had the same problem too. I operate a Mac Pro Early 2006, but it just can't start up after a long sleep. When I pressed the power button, it seems starting but then just buff off. I've taken all hdds and rams and let the machine running with just os Hd and it seems to be going. I've tried installing the unplug hardware and seems to be working. Another option i normally tried also, which helped to me due with start up issue is a preRam reset by, cmmd, opt together with P and R key, all pressed down after you hear the first chime, and still pressing it till you hear the second chime then released the keys.

But I think i might be agree with dxhole, commenting on the power supply. It could be the source of the problem.

Hope to hear any further comments on this folks..

Has anyone had boot up dramas and your mac pro chimes 4 times in a row?

I had the power supply replaced 5 months ago. I had to have the graphics card replaced 3 months ago. Everything ran smoothly most days. I've had a random problem that when I boot up the mac pro won't recognise external drives. It doesn't show them on the desktop. I found that if I turned the mains power off for 20 seconds or so, and removed and replaced all usb and firewire leads, when I hit the boot / power button all external drives would once again appear on the desktop.

Currently my problem is, I went to boot up this morning, now I have the start up light, a chime then nothing! I've tried a safe boot several times and also an install disc boot by holding down the "C" key on the keyboard, the disc seems to be spinning, then nothing. I have unplugged all peripherals and tried booting, but nothing! I can see nothing on my screens at all! I get random chimes when I hit the power button, sometimes once, sometimes 4. What the @#^* is going on? My machine is a 2007 model / 4 gig ram. Pretty average in todays market.

Any info would be greatfully accepted!

Hi Matty

I'm not sure whether you've find the solution for your problem, but try resetting the smu on the logic board and see if it works on ya.

thanks

Hello Matty,

i had the same problem as you and i´m having it again.

MacPro 2008 with 4 Gbytes and 2 harddrives.

After one year of use i started having problems like you, randomly when i pressed the power button: lights on, chime and nothing....no apple logo. This symptom increased until i couldn't start the computer any more. The computer presented also the same sympthon as Hitcher. Sometimes i couldn't startup the computer for hours, or days....

My computer was at repair center almost 6 months !!!! For them, the computer was alright until i was lucky to show them that the computer was not ok. So, they replaced the PSU....and it was ok, for 15 days.... then.... it started with the same sympthons..... crazy!!! but the repair center wouldn't make the repair again because it was out of guarantee (6 months in the repair center..!! time goes by...in Europe we have 2 years).... After almost 6 months i was able to convince Apple that my computer was out of guarantee because of the time it was in repair center. I took my computer to another repair center and they replace the PSU...

I´m working with the computer now for one year since the replacement and it started again.... so... i believe that i need another PSU... very strange issue.... this is the third PSU to be damage

PS: my graphics also was replaced....but it was the model with problems that apple had a replace program .... althought again... i was not lucky... they didn't accept my card... the replace program had terminated!!!

Similar startup problem as mentioned earlier except after running for a while, the Mac Pro 2007 computer starts making this loud fan noise and it gets increasingly louder until it sounds like a jet engine ready to take off?

Mac Mall says it's a combination of the fans and hard drive going bad and want about $400 to replace?

Hi David, I would like to talk to you about your modification (3 x PSU), can you please get back to me? Would be great if you could document this, maybe on free blog (if you don't have a website), or Youtube etc...

Is your system still working OK?

I too have an Early Mac Pro 2008 Apple with a bad power supply / PSU.

Shame on Apple for not doing anything about it, there are tons of people out there with dead power supplies / PSUs in their Mac Pro 2008, 2009, 2011 etc...

Apple should do a recall or something.

Thanks in advance.

i swap hds on start up now my mac pro 1.1 won't boot right..I put it back on the right disk... but i think i messed something up...any help would be appreciated....thanks

I made a third MOD i take the old PSU doughter card that has the thermal diodes for temps in psu1 and psu2 fixed to 45c so mac think the psu is at 45ºc and the fans goes to normal speed, the PSU pwer OK conected to gray cable on ATX power PSU goes high +5v ... i then use a sigle corsair 1000w PSU ... it worked well for 6 month... then started again random reboots.... THE PROBLEM IS FAULTY MOTHERBORAD THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLES REPORTING THIS PROBLEM AND APPLE IS IN SILENCE.... I tried every thing remove1CPU (b) and the problem persist, chage CPU (a) to (b) the same, with fans at 2000 rpm very cold working the problem persist, i monitored temps and voltages and amps in every test i made 12v go to 12,3 in idle and 11,9 ful load running cinebench, memtest, itunes movie simultaneos... for more then 3 hours no problem but then after 3 mores hours it startedd ramdom reboots... i changed video cards hd 2600 stock, a hd 5770 with external 6 pin cable, nvidia gt640 pc card... it booted but after 3 to 6 hours ramdon reboots again, i tried with 2 gb stock memory, with 4gb avant modules, with 8 gb nemix ram, with all togeder and the thing ramdom reboots, i try remove 1 raiser card no diference inter change raisers cards, clean al contacts same issue i dedicated 1 hours to this thing mesurements... i replaced all capacitors in the mother board... same thing... worked well 1 month then ramdon reboot... what i see is corrosion in the motherboard ... i make my power cables to the motherboard awg 16 for every conector, i also make shorter cable to the bottom conector to improve power loss ... it continues the ramdom reboot i finaly take all apart and put it in the garbage can... APPLE KNOWS THAT ALL OR A LOT OF MAC PRO EARLY 2008 HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM AND THEY DONT SAY NOTHING... AFTER WEE SPEND $3000 ON THIS THING ... Same thing goes with the imac 2008 VIDEO CARD... Lot of people having same problem, same goes with mac book pro 2008 video problem... APPLE MACHINES FROM 2008 TO 2010 HAVE MANY PROBLEMS... And all that problems begins 1 year later when your garanty is lost... there are so many bad reports on 2008 mac pro having the same problem the $3000 lotery

The worst of all is if you take your Mac Pro to apple support the take your mac for 2 weeks, they run their test disk, they say you is the PSU (you change it) $300 in a month problem return... you go back to apple support another 2 weeks thay say change the graphics card, another $200 ... then 2 weeks later problems return.... you take it back to apple support they say it is the mother board.... another $400 ... this is not garated that you will have the same problem in 6 month or a year... That motherboard are not produced today maybe refurbished.... so think it well before waste your money..... a core i7 2600k PC performs 1..3 times better than a mac pro 2008 with two xeon e5462... imagine the new i7 4th 5th 6th generation... Trying to repair this thing is waste of money including the $3000 you paid for it and they last from 2008 to 2010 all reports of failures started in november 2009...

all my post is refered to the MAC PRO EARLY 2008 3,1 DUAL XEON .... i have a friend that has a mac pro 1,1 working grate today... the bad thing in 1,1 and 1,2 mac pro they claim to be 64 bits but is false their EFI is 32bits... Don let you install yosemite or el capitan.... They use diferent motherboard and PSU.... slow buss and memory ... Mac Pro 2009, 2010 working grate no failures they are other design...

All my test i maded them in osx 10.8 , Mavericks, Yosemite and El capitan in 4 difernt SSD ... i also try with diferent riser cards from ebay , booting with only riser A exchange raisers card.... i also delided de chip bridge on mother board to replace thermal compund x5400 chipset , and also used rework staton hot air in x5400 chipset.... if you inspect the motherboard with gain lens or camera x10 you will see a lot o corrosion in diferents parts of the motherboard i think is design problem if you google you will notice that early 2008 mac pro 3,1 is the only and masive reporting of this failure

All other mac pro models solved the issue simply replace the PSU , PSU are not eternal nothing is eternal but at least we spect 3 to 4 years for a Desktop to work and more if we spend $3000 in a server grade machine....

Try to disconnect the front fan and the rear fan when your mac is down. Start without the fans and the problem is fixed. Stop the mac. Connect the fans and it's done. Worked for me. It seems my mac had overheated because I ran it without the cover. The motherboard seems to memorize an overheating. Unplug the fans resets this memory.

These particular PSUs fail because of bad factory work.

They would need to have been properly flowed in the soldering process at factory.

$@$* like this is what makes us lose faith in Apple.

How can they dare ship MacPros with these dodgy PSUs, and won’t get them replaced, they’re so smart as to never ever let them die within the guarantee period.

Then they suddenly fail. Almost always just after the period ended.

$@$* PSUs, I guess Delta (the provider) is using monkeys in the soldering plant at their factory.

And eBay sellers are just making a profit on selling replacement units that maybe are just refurbished units that will fail also given enough time.

We gulp this and cope with this because of a brand’s undeserved reputation.

It’s all been a money drain since Steve Jobs left us.

Apple is no longer a winner game, it’s all bells and whistles but they don’t care about the power going to their MacPros. Please take the Pro nickname out, it’s not deserved.

They put us through all this $@$*, this hoops because they want us to obligue and not use our 2008-2010 MacPros anymore, they need to make a profit from us, they need to get us to buy a new “umbrella-cube” 3k-4K machine just because.

Btw, it’s all about the soldering quality from factory, the damned relay switch inside the PSUs, and/or the temp sensor &&^&^$^ with all the security settings for switching it off just because.

No one wants to determine the real culprit because mos people are better off selling you a 200 or 300 bucks replacement.

Technical progress has become only a money drain and a huge waste of otherwise repairable units. Obsolescence and customer-obliguing tactics are the norm. No one cares anymore and they just are waiting for us to shell out the cash for a psu which could probably be repaired for ten or twenty bucks.

Welcome to never ending progress and never ending dissatisfaction.