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Mac Pro Won't Boot—Black Screen

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Mike Yonts

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Hi RedUsers,

Yesterday afternoon I installed the latest updates to OS X and FCP X on my 2008 Mac Pro. Nothing seemed amiss, and I shut it down and went home.

This morning it won't boot up—fans come on, white light next to the power button flashes, but screens stay black with no sad Mac, no question mark. No startup chime either. I took out the Red Rocket card, the SATA card, disconnected everything except what was needed to boot up, and the same thing. Tried the various safe mode and PRAM key combinations on startup. Put in an older hard disk with a system folder that has worked in the past—no different. It really seems like the bootup is hanging before it even gets to the startup disk.

I have an appointment at the genius bar this afternoon—do you think they'll tell me this Mac bit the dust?
 
Bad timing on your software update, but more than likely this tower has indeed bit the dust. There are easily fixable things that cause a Mac Pro to not chime and start up -- bad PCIe card, bad RAM module(s), bad CPU(s)... Unfortunately, more often than not, when I've seen this, it's often toasted logic board and/ or other components. One has to decipher which component(s) may have been the culprit if it was caused by an ESD issue or surge or something.

Most likely the Geniuses will look at it and try all the standard stuff, then ask you to leave the system so an actual technician can go over it with a fine-tooth comb. I hope you have your drives backed up, if not, pull them and back them up before you take it in!

Speaking of drives, it can be a HDD issue. I've had two towers die like this on me of several I've owned. The first was an '08 3,1 Mac Pro and the other an '09 4,1. The '08 tower actually died due to a hard drive crash. The drive motor seized up and sent enough of a surge to take out the logic board. It was obvious the drive was the problem because after the crash on power-up, the drive would be instantly hot enough to fry an egg with no apparent motor vibration or motion happening. I ended up having both of those towers replaced with new units under AppleCare because they couldn't source all the necessary parts for repair at the times it happened. If it's a current generation (2010 or newer) Mac Pro, the parts are all still available, so they will probably repair. If yours is still under AppleCare, make sure they do it in a timely manner and if it starts taking too long, you can always demand a replacement. That's actually part of the AppleCare agreement.

If the system is not covered under AppleCare at this point, I wish you luck. Getting parts is difficult at best, even for current systems, especially if the system is out of warranty and expensive. If it's a 2009 or earlier system, finding parts is like looking for penguins at the north pole...

Does the light on the front of the system blink with a recognizable or repeating pattern?
 
Thanks, Jeff...it's a2008, so I've had my eye on replacing it anyway. Yeah, fried logic board fits with other stuff I've seen as I google around. Light flashes rhythmically, a little faster than once per second, I'd say.

I'm not in the middle of any big editing projects, so if it is dead I should be able to get by with my MacBook Air for a while. Files are pretty well backed up but the stuff I'm working on at the moment is on SATA disks, so I'll need to figure out an adapter for the Air.

But then, IMac or new Mac Pro?

Thanks for your help, Jeff.

Mike
 
Mike Yonts said:
Thanks, Jeff...it's a2008, so I've had my eye on replacing it anyway. Yeah, fried logic board fits with other stuff I've seen as I google around. Light flashes rhythmically, a little faster than once per second, I'd say.

I'm not in the middle of any big editing projects, so if it is dead I should be able to get by with my MacBook Air for a while. Files are pretty well backed up but the stuff I'm working on at the moment is on SATA disks, so I'll need to figure out an adapter for the Air.

But then, IMac or new Mac Pro?

Thanks for your help, Jeff.

Mike
Click to expand...


Do you have a spare video card you can throw in and try?

If you do need a new computer I would normally lean towards the Mac Pro if you are editing RED footage but with the addition of thunderbolt ports I might consider an iMac. I just hate the fact that its all enclosed and you can't get into the box...but thats just me.
 
As I was reading your post, I kept thinking "Well maybe you could try- . . . oh. You tried that. Well next is- . . . tried that too. Third is- nope you did that."

Which unfortunately leaves Logic Board (or something attached). No bueno. The white light that flashes, is there a pattern to it? I seem to remember, from my Apple Store days (wasn't a "Genius", but I worked in that part of the store) that how the light flashes indicates what failed. It may be an internal light, though, and not the external white light. Been 3 years (almost to the day) since I worked there.

Horrible timing, too. The next Mac Pro is maybe 2 months away, and even if that's not the direction you'll want to go, it'll probably drive prices of older Mac Pros down, both refurbished and used.
 
The flashing is a very straight rhythm, on and off about the same time, like a metronome.

I've plugged the boot drive into a laptop and it mounts fine, looks like everything's there, so at least it doesn't seem like that's the cause of the blowup.

Yeah, my instinct is to hold out for the Mac Pro, depending on what the shipping ones are like. I tend to go five or six years between upgrades, so it has worked well to get a macho one and keep it for a whle.
 
If you have time before your Genius appointment, back up your drives. Or just pull them and don't bring them in and tell them you needed to back them up and they're obviously not part of the problem.

System will chime/ post with no video card installed. I would remove all drives and PCIe cards from the system, make sure all memory modules and memory boards are seated properly and no visible damage/ scorching or discoloration is present on any contacts there or anywhere else in the system. Check all cable connections on the logic board, including the iPass/ SAS connector that goes to the drive bays, fan connections, etc.. See if the system will post, do a PRAM reset and see if you can get a chime. Next step from there would be to check the RAM.

I don't have a list of the diagnostic codes for the LED light handy. If it's a rhythmic on/off at the same pace, I want to say that's a memory or PCIe issue. You could swap out RAM if you have good RAM elsewhere. But in the end, it may just be a blown logic board anyway. All too often a logic board can die along with any other device that's connected when that device fries itself. :(

Apple techs should diagnose it for you at no charge. Being an '08 tower, it's probably not worth the cost of repair, unfortunately.

I don't know what I would recommend for a replacement. The current Mac Pro is a solid system, but already one generation of Xeon behind and will be two generations behind within the next 60 days. The new Mac Pro looks intriguing and I'm sure it will be a nice system. However, it's going to be a rough transition at first for those trying to make it be their go-to system for everything. Will take the market some time to catch up with Thunderbolt 2 and the new GPU form factors. Those GPUs are not proprietary as a lot of people are stressing over, however none of the PC motherboard and GPU makers seem interested in this new form factor. Unfortunately, I think it makes too much sense for them to adopt -- as in they're all upset they didn't think of it and it's more of an imposition by Intel. Has nothing to do with the round nature of the new Mac Pro, but it's a new approach to GPUs where the GPU card itself is just that, a card with GPU and RAM on it. The actual interfaces for displays are separate. It doesn't follow the existing slot form factor, obviously. So who knows where it's going to lead. It could very well become an Apple/Intel only thing on the same level as Thunderbolt, where common PC support is almost non-existent. And now that SATA Express (PCIe topology incorporated with SATA -- like Thunderbolt, but lower cost and storage-centric) has been finalized, and USB 3 established with USB 4 looming on the horizon, Thunderbolt is a tough sell to most of the PC crowd.
 
Tried taking out everything but the RAM and starting as Jeff suggested–no difference except it's much quieter without the graphics card's fan coming on. I don't have other RAM to try, but I did take out the two cards, push on all the RAM modules and put them back in. No difference, but I did notice that Apple's website says that the once-per-second blink means that the RAM is faulty or not installed. I don't know if that's the only thing it could mean, and it would certainly fry my butt a little bit to have to decide whether to buy new RAM this late in this computer's life.

I don't think I'll take it to the Geniuses with the current boot drive in–I have one that was current a couple of months ago that I'll put in.

Thanks again for the suggestions, everybody.
 
I just recently had to replace a midplane board on an 09 MacPro. I thought it would be most expensive but at $280 installed I just dropped the loot. Don't automatically think the machine is toast, cost analysis can tell you what to do.

BTW - It does sound like a main board issue. Mine was slightly different though, it exhibited signs of a shot PSU - No power or response at all. Turned out to be the board though.
 
I had this issue only a week ago and took my 08 tower in for repair expecting the worst. A simple vacum and clean of the 5 years of collected dust and crap sucked in by the fan and the machine is all good. You too might be lucky?
 
Not outside the realm of possibility—there was some construction work at my office recently that kicked up some dust.

The person who helped me at the Apple Store speculated that it could be the back plane board. I nodded as if I knew what that meant, but I didn't know computers had plane boards.
 
Mike Yonts said:
Not outside the realm of possibility—there was some construction work at my office recently that kicked up some dust.

The person who helped me at the Apple Store speculated that it could be the back plane board. I nodded as if I knew what that meant, but I didn't know computers had plane boards.
Click to expand...

The back plane is another name for the motherboard or logic board.
 
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