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 Franz71,

    Franz71 Franz71 Dec 11, 2015 12:48 AM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 11, 2015 12:48 AM in response to maxcarella

    Hi Max,

    do you think my problem is caused by the same bug?

     

    Thanks! Ciao ciao

  • by maxcarella,

    maxcarella maxcarella Dec 13, 2015 2:47 AM in response to Franz71
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 13, 2015 2:47 AM in response to Franz71

    If when Mac freezing, you disconnect Thunderbolt Cable, and reconnect after some seconds, and de-freeze but work slowly, the problem is the same that  have me too.

     

    BUT, I think that I have solved with the workaround that I wrote in thread.

    Let me know

     

    Max

  • by maxcarella,

    maxcarella maxcarella Dec 13, 2015 2:50 AM in response to mauro16
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 13, 2015 2:50 AM in response to mauro16

    Any news (you or other users) about usage after workaround?

    Max

  • by mauro16,

    mauro16 mauro16 Dec 13, 2015 3:32 AM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Desktops
    Dec 13, 2015 3:32 AM in response to maxcarella

    i have switched to mac os to apply the workaround, and i have applied it. Then i rebooted in windows 10 because i still need to work with windows for some time. i rebooted windows 3-4 times and i had just an event of auto-reboot. This seems to indicate things are going better, but the problem is not completely gone. I have heard the nvram is common between windows and mac os so the workaround could also work with windows but things are the way I said above. I disabled amd crossfireX under windows, let me see what happens, then in the next days or weeks i may be able to switch to mac os. Meanwhile i hope to have feedback from other users.

  • by shing123,

    shing123 shing123 Dec 13, 2015 10:12 AM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 13, 2015 10:12 AM in response to maxcarella

    this is the longest I've been without a gpu crash. This seems to be looking good. If the fix is only 1 line of setting, the is going to be very embarrassing on apple's part. I hope i didnt jinx it by writing about it

  • by ronaldmcdonalds,

    ronaldmcdonalds ronaldmcdonalds Dec 13, 2015 10:14 AM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 13, 2015 10:14 AM in response to maxcarella

    I've had the nvram setting applied for most of the weekend and I'm still seeing the freezing/lockups.  I can still bring it back to life by removing the thunderbolt cable and connecting it to a different port but this is totally unacceptable.  I guess I'll be dragging my Mac Pro and 27" Thunderbolt display downtown to an Apple store that's packed with holiday shoppers just so some 'genius' can tell me they can't reproduce the problem again.  Sigh.

     

    At this point I'm thinking it might just be easier to sell this computer and buy something that doesn't have this problem.

  • by maxcarella,

    maxcarella maxcarella Dec 13, 2015 11:22 AM in response to ronaldmcdonalds
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 13, 2015 11:22 AM in response to ronaldmcdonalds

    Hello.

    Be careful that the parameter is setted, with

    nvram -p | grep boot-args

    the result must be : dart=0x0


    in my case, the first time the system doesn't set correctly the parameter.

    I Had to do this thing two times.

     

    let me know

    Max

  • by ronaldmcdonalds,

    ronaldmcdonalds ronaldmcdonalds Dec 13, 2015 12:48 PM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 13, 2015 12:48 PM in response to maxcarella

    Just tried setting nvram again for good measure.  Will report back.

  • by maxcarella,

    maxcarella maxcarella Dec 13, 2015 12:57 PM in response to ronaldmcdonalds
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 13, 2015 12:57 PM in response to ronaldmcdonalds

    Check the appliance of parameter with

     

    nvram -p | grep boot-args


    Max

  • by Franz71,

    Franz71 Franz71 Dec 14, 2015 1:26 AM in response to mauro16
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 14, 2015 1:26 AM in response to mauro16

    I confirm that the workaround seems to solve the problem of slowness of the thunderbolt.

    Unfortunately it does not solve the problem of disconnection bluetooth and audio loss

  • by Franz71,

    Franz71 Franz71 Dec 14, 2015 2:12 AM in response to mauro16
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 14, 2015 2:12 AM in response to mauro16

    I correct: I have the same problems! With my $ 4K MAC PRO is impossible to work!

     

    ps. The Apple service has just replaced the logic board with connections thunderbolt, bluetooth, usb, etc. Same problems

  • by Paul Rutherford1,

    Paul Rutherford1 Paul Rutherford1 Dec 14, 2015 9:37 AM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Dec 14, 2015 9:37 AM in response to maxcarella

    The suggested fix did not work for my Mac Pro (late 2013) with a single 4K monitor connected via display port and using Mac OS 10.11.2. My current issue is that if I set the Energy Saver control panel to turn the display off after say 5 minutes and after my monitor goes into a power saving mode, I cannot get monitor to reactivate. Disconnecting the Display port connection and reconnecting does not make a difference. I think my Mac Pro is probably still alive, but the monitor will not reactivate, so I've been manually powering down and rebooting. My current "fix" is to disable the option to turn off monitor ("Never" setting), then manually turn off power to my monitor whenever I want to blank it out. Turning on the monitor power later will restore monitor display. I also do not allow Mac to go to sleep.

     

    Just to give some history with my Mac Pro, when trying to install Mac OS 10.11.1 I had major lockup problems while the display was active. My screen would slowly start showing some jerkiness, then eventually lock up with spinning ball. Manual power down and reboot sometimes brought back my system, but sometimes would lock up during startup, so I decided to revert back to a Mac OS 10.10.5 and wait for the next update (10.11.2). When Mac OS 10.11.2 came out recently, I did the update and the original lockup problems did not reoccur, except for the problem I identified in first paragraph.

     

    I had no problems at all with my 4K system using Mac 10.10.5. I was also able to update to 10.11.0 with no problems. All my problems started with Mac OS 10.11.1 update. Prior to getting my 4K monitor, I was using the Apple 30' Cinema display with an adaptor to Thunderbolt connection. I had no problems with that either on my Mac Pro using Mac OS 10.10.5.

     

    Hopefully the suggested fix will help others, but it did not help me.

     

    Paul

  • by Slokkie,

    Slokkie Slokkie Dec 15, 2015 6:11 AM in response to maxcarella
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 15, 2015 6:11 AM in response to maxcarella

    Hi maxcarella

     

    I have tested the setting sudo nvram boot-args="dart=0x0" on 1 of my problematic MacPro's and the result with the screensaver test is the same. A freeze within 48 hours.


    Anybody knows how to see if the settings are really set? (edit: nvram -p in the terminal shows this)

    result: it was not set after 1 try, I will start testing again

  • by Slokkie,

    Slokkie Slokkie Dec 16, 2015 6:50 AM in response to Slokkie
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Dec 16, 2015 6:50 AM in response to Slokkie

    Hi All,

     

    Today 1 of my Mac Pro's returned from Apple repair. During the first repair the MLB was replaced without any result.

    This second try Apple replaced the I/O Wall and Inlet, and replaced 1 of the 2 D300 videocards with an upgrade to D700.

    So my machine has now 1x D300 and 1x D700 installed. I will do my testing and keep you all updated.

  • by ronaldmcdonalds,

    ronaldmcdonalds ronaldmcdonalds Dec 17, 2015 1:44 PM in response to ronaldmcdonalds
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 17, 2015 1:44 PM in response to ronaldmcdonalds

    Still getting lock-ups with nvram setting.  Guess I'll be making my 5th genius bar appointment this weekend.  Sigh.  Nearly out of warranty on this thing.  They'd better admit that there's a problem this time.

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