mauro16

Q: mac pro late 2013 freezes with spinning wheel

i bought a mac pro (late 2013) 50 days ago, os is yosemite 10.10.3. I often get the spinning wheel of death and the mac freezes, i.e. it doesn't react to mouse click or keyboard. it happens on average 1 time a day. When it happens i have to restart the machine by pressing the computer's power button.

I have already contacted apple support by phone, i have made many reset operations under their control, but nothing changed.

 

After the restart, when i examine the console log the last message before the reboot is often the following one

 

windowserver: surface testing disallowed updates for 10 sequential attempts

 

By searching this message on google i found that the problem might be related with the energy saving settings, i.e. it happens when the mac wakes from sleep. So i changed those settings to prevent the mac going on stop state, and today the problem did not happen, but i'm not sure what wil happen tomorrow ... so i'm looking for information/advice about this kind of problem.

Mac Pro (Late 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on May 16, 2015 12:19 PM

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Q: mac pro late 2013 freezes with spinning wheel

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  • by maxcarella,

    maxcarella maxcarella Dec 10, 2015 6:55 AM in response to mauro16
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 6:55 AM in response to mauro16

    Dear mauro16,

    I think that I have found a workaround to fix problem, I have made 15 days to continuous work without freeze.

     

    You may be having an issue on your computer that is a result of a bug in OS X that affects OS 10.8 and higher. 

    You can try the following to see if it helps:


    From Applications/Utilites, launch Terminal.

    In the Terminal type:

    sudo nvram boot-args="dart=0x0"

    and when it asks for your password, enter your password.

    Then restart your Mac.

     

    Please let me know this goes.

     

    Max

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Dec 10, 2015 6:59 AM in response to maxcarella
    Level 9 (61,317 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 10, 2015 6:59 AM in response to maxcarella

    what is dart, and why does setting it to zero change anything?

  • by maxcarella,

    maxcarella maxcarella Dec 10, 2015 7:15 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 7:15 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    I don't know why. This workaround is sent me from Metric Halo Support.

    They tell me that is  a parameter about protection NVRAM limit Bandwidth of a thunderbolt connected devices (such HD, and audio cards).

     

    Let me know if it fix the freezing. In my case it helps me.

    Max

  • by shing123,

    shing123 shing123 Dec 10, 2015 7:30 AM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 7:30 AM in response to maxcarella

    newest update to 10.11.2 was no help. crash within 10 mins of restarting. Really regret getting the macpro. All 6 cores are of little use. A xeon computer that crashes unpredictably. good grief

  • by maxcarella,

    maxcarella maxcarella Dec 10, 2015 7:32 AM in response to shing123
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 7:32 AM in response to shing123

    Let me know if the fix that I have indicated in thread helps you...

    Max

  • by ronaldmcdonalds,

    ronaldmcdonalds ronaldmcdonalds Dec 10, 2015 10:17 AM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 10:17 AM in response to maxcarella

    I had been looking for just such an option.  I'll give this a shot later today and report back if there's any success.  Thanks!

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Dec 10, 2015 11:21 AM in response to mauro16
    Level 9 (61,317 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 10, 2015 11:21 AM in response to mauro16

    IPv6 should be set to "link-local only" if available. Bonjour uses it to find local devices such as Printers on your local network.

     

    If IPv6 is not ON, it will not interfere with anything, and working harder to shut it off is not productive.

  • by mauro16,

    mauro16 mauro16 Dec 10, 2015 12:00 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 10, 2015 12:00 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    maybe i forgot to update the thread aboout this, i tried any possibile setting of ipv6, and always had the freezing.

  • by mauro16,

    mauro16 mauro16 Dec 10, 2015 12:18 PM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 10, 2015 12:18 PM in response to maxcarella

    I might probably try what you suggest, sooner or later. But one question is: if this in my case were to worsen things, how would i restore the former settings?

     

    Currently i have installed windows 10 on the mac pro and it works quite fine, the problem is just when i shut down the mac and then boot it again. Typically in the period right after the boot the mac shows instability, that is usually it reboots itself one time and that's all (at times there might be a second self-reboot and/or some driver crash). Then it works for days and days without any driver crash, reboot or other problem. Now it's 8 days it works without problems, but i know the next time i reboot it i will have this instability.

     

    Another small problem is that with windows the system is very slow to wake from sleep (it usually takes more than 1 minute, so i often prefer not to put it in sleep mode). I tried to change the energy saving options but could not solve this problem.

  • by maxcarella,

    maxcarella maxcarella Dec 10, 2015 12:56 PM in response to mauro16
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 12:56 PM in response to mauro16

    Several pro audio manufacturers are recommending this solution to audio dropouts in Yosemite:

     

    Intel CPU's include a virtualization technology called VT-d that allows the OS to prevent I/Odevices from accessing areas of memory outside the area allocated to them by the OS. OS X 10.8.2 introduced a bug that can cause crashes when VT-d is enabled. Apparently the bug is even more troublesome in Yosemite.

     

    The fix is to disable VT-d by entering the following command in Terminal, then restarting the Mac:

     

    sudo nvram boot-args="dart=0x0"

     

    This change is reversible by deleting the boot-args parameter in nvram, which you can do by entering the following command, then restarting:

     

    sudo nvram -d boot-args


    Max

  • by mauro16,

    mauro16 mauro16 Dec 10, 2015 1:41 PM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (5 points)
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    Dec 10, 2015 1:41 PM in response to maxcarella

    does this apply also to El Capitan? Are you using yosemite or El Capitan? I have El Capitan 10.11.1 on the Mac side, it's at least 40 days i don't even use mac os.

  • by maxcarella,

    maxcarella maxcarella Dec 10, 2015 2:06 PM in response to mauro16
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 2:06 PM in response to mauro16

    yes The bug affects also el captain

  • by shing123,

    shing123 shing123 Dec 10, 2015 6:01 PM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 6:01 PM in response to maxcarella

    I assume thats 0*0. not the letter x?

    I gonna try it. If this works then there really is a very deep problem brewing within apple. If 1 line of setting can stop random crashes and which was detected long ago, this will not inspire confidence for apple's pitch on quality and ease of use. I gonna start ranting again because I lost so much productivity time and had so much grief for the 1st macpro I bought with hard earned money

  • by maxcarella,

    maxcarella maxcarella Dec 10, 2015 6:04 PM in response to shing123
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 10, 2015 6:04 PM in response to shing123

    no, the command is exactly

     

    sudo nvram boot-args="dart=0x0"


    with "x" letter

  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Dec 10, 2015 6:42 PM in response to maxcarella
    Level 9 (61,317 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 10, 2015 6:42 PM in response to maxcarella

    that 0x0 is programmer's shorthand. the leading zero-x says the next item should be interpreted as "Hex" (short for hexadecimal [base-16]), and the last zero is the base-16 value, zero. 0x0 for hexadecimal zero.

     

    You can also cut-and-paste a line someone says is "exactly this".

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