Macpro boot time gone daft...

Darryn

Darryn

Darryn

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
4,449
Location
Colne.... Up Norf.
My 8core Macpro seems to have gotten a problem...

For the first time in about 6months i turned it off today to add another 1tb HDD (4th slot), when i turned it back on it just sat there with the white screen and spinning loading symbol for about 5minutes and then finally booted into OSX (10.5.4) OSX failed to load properly, my background images were missing and all desktop icons missing. :(

I turned it off and tried again, and again it took 5mins to boot, so i turned it back off, pulled the new drive and tried again... and Again it took 5mins to get to desktop, at this point i pulled out my OSX installation disk and tried to run disk utility to see if my main boot drive was dieing, but every time i tried to boot off this disk the computer would hang for 3 or 4 minutes and then CRASH :confused: Macs dont crash, but up popped the grey warning screen "please Reboot..."

So, i pulled my Ram and reseated the standard 2x 1gb Apple sticks and tried again, this time OSX booted in seconds as it should and all seemed well, so this points me towards the 4x 2gb Sticks... I try and run disk utility from boot and again even with just the 2x 1gb sticks in it crashes the computer.

This made me think the 4x 2gb sticks are ok, as removing them hasnt cured my problems, so i stick them back in, start the computer holding down "D" and indeed it succesfully completes the system check with them in.

Anyone got any help, ideas, advice? im baffled, im currently waiting for some new fast HDDs to arrive to replace my bootdrive, but, i dont know how thats going to work if it currently wont let me boot from the DVD anyway. :confused: :(
 
This sometimes happens to my PowerMac when i haven't used it in some time.

Would just not boot, remove the RAM and leave only 1Gb in and it would boot, then put the 4GB back in and it would work. Strange.

Would be nice to see a fix.
 
Mohinder said:
Tried zapping the PRAM?
Click to expand...

Just tried that and it hasnt helped. Ive run all the daily/weekly and montly scirpts which also hasnt helped, im going to pull my boot drive now and try and boot using the DVD, thats my current main concern as the slow boot doesnt seem to affect the speed of the machine once its up and running... And as its on 24/7 it will rarely bother me.
 
Been into preferences and checked the startup drive is selected correctly? I had the same symptoms when it wasn't.
 
Feek said:
Been into preferences and checked the startup drive is selected correctly? I had the same symptoms when it wasn't.
Click to expand...

Yup, thats set correctly, but ive also been having to use "command" during boot to switch back to the HDD after trying to boot from DVD.

Just tried booting from the DVD with the boot HDD removed and it still wont have any, im very tempted to throw the Macpro in the car and take it to the genius bar at Manchester, see if they can do anything with it. :confused: I need to be able to do a fresh install of OSX when my new HDD finally arrive.
 
I had a weird experience when installing my second 1TB drive too..

I put the disc in and booted up in to the OS; Used disk utility to format the drive only to find that the drive wasn't appearing in the list :eek:

After several minutes of trying to boot off the DVD (with no effect) I just pulled the both drives out, installed the new drive only in Bay 1, formatted, shutdown and re-inserted the boot drive in Bay 1 (swapping new drive to Bay 2).

Only until I did it this way could I get the Mac Pro to see the new drive.

Also, is yours running the latest 1.3 firmware, Darryn?
 
Yup, im currently running 1.3 firmware.

Im going to pull all the HDDs and then try and boot from the DVD with just 1 at a time... i cannot understand why the DVD wont boot at all, but having never booted from it i dont know what to expect. :confused:
 
Well, i pulled the 4x2gb sticks and 3x 1tb HDD and booted off the DVD and it worked, Disk Utility found and repaired some in-correct permissions on my boot drive, but found no disk errors.

I then booted into OSX and it took ~5mins.

I plugged all my drives back in, stuck the ram back in, and booted into OSX and again ~5mins boot time, but once im in it runs perfectly... So, im leaving it as it is, at least until the new F1 and Velociraptors arrive, then ill re-install OSX from scratch onto 1 of them and see how that goes.

As this machine is on 24/7, slow booting isnt really that much of an issue, booting off the DVD was important to me and ive found a work-around for that.
 
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