Fail to restart

How about the most obvious, run Apple Hardware Test.

Might you be having issues with the consistency and continuity of your electrical supply? My first choice would be to connect your MP to a decent UPS to rule this out.

Hi

I have the same issue on my MP. The noise you hear is the DVD drive check boot that run an run.

I suspect the graphic card (ATI X1900 XT) is the culprit. but I don't really know the reason why this happen.

Still looking...

Just discovered same problem here: after 5 days of fiddling with one of our new 8-core Mac Pros it just sits and ticks from the optical bay if you restart it. If you shutdown and then startup it's fine, but as of this evening it can't do a restart any more.

I'd be grateful for any ideas! We have another one I'll setup tomorrow (with, unbelievably, the consecutive serial number!) so I'll know more soon.

OK, I don't know if this actually clarifies anything, but I cloned the system from the faulty Mac onto the other one and it promptly started doing the same thing. However, resetting the PRAM made the problem go away (even though the problem actually manifested itself on the second chime). Resetting the PRAM on the other machine seems to have cleared it for now too...

same problem how do i reset the PRAM and what is PRAM??

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

Mind you, the problem hasn't gone completely. It's happened once or twice since I did this - but now the initial installations are all done I won't need to do soft restarts very often. Still, it'd nice to know what's causing it...

If cloning the system from one machine to a second causes the second to do the same thing then clearly your first machine has a corrupt system on it. No point in me guessing WHAT that corruption is other than the obvious fact that it relates in some way to your startup issue. I would do a clean install myself and cut directly to the question if it is hardware or software. If you want to save some time, buy and external HD or install another internal and do a clean install there and boot from that to learn if your system software is involved. Personally I think it odd to clone a system from a misbehaving machine to another....

The reason for cloning is pretty simple: I had one week to set up two identical systems. It took five days to install the dozens of bits and pieces we need on the first machine; just one day to clone it and adjust the serial numbers.

This startup problem is annoying, but not worth spending another 5 days to install everything again...

To test it properly I would have to check for the problem after every single bit of software I added - and do both machines at once to rule out faulty hardware (it wouldn't rule out, say, incompatible RAM, as they both have the same hardware specs). This would take 2-3 weeks; I only had one. To all intents and purposes it was a "clean install" of what we need on the machine: I erased the hard drive of the brand new computer, did a custom install of just the bits of the Mac OS we need and then added all the software required to make these machines useful. They would have no purpose with only half this stuff installed.

The 8-core systems may still have a different "build" of OS X than other systems. Both were identical models?

When cloning did you use ARD or SuperDuper or...?

And any PPC programs were installed from originals and not from a non-Mac Pro or MacIntel for instance.

Just obvious items.

when I had some trouble with RAM it took a long time to be sure all was okay, and then quite a bit of time to actually weed through anything missed or corrupt. Mostly using Disk Warrior on any clone before I trusted the backup.

RAM tests with AHT and Memtest are about as much as can be done, and to watch for parity errors.

There can be some driver or extension or startup item conflicts.

I did more than 3 clean install, the problem is still there. I just asking myself if it's not a SMC bug (like some iMac had).

Did someone find a clue ? I still have this problem. On thing to know : I borrowed a nVidia graphic card and it seems the problem is gone.

I would like to know if everyone with this problem have an ATI X1900XT ? because this card need more power and have an extra electric cable. Maybe a poor working power suply could cause the computer to fail to restart.

Janeiro

impossible to zap the PRAM because the machine just ticks on restart (therefore never restarts to zap the pram while holding option-apple P - R)

PRAM reset happens before booting.

A restart only reset PRAM but not NVRAM which is done from cold start only.

but an SMC Reset would help.

Oddly I had to zap pram/nvram today when I pulled the boot drive and inserted one from my shelf. There are three bootable drives, but it never even got to system picker on its own and had trouble getting via Option key either. ;-(

I always preferred PPC boot to Open Firmware which was easy and thorough way to clean a corrupt device tree and nvram.

I'm sorry, I don't have an answer either...
All I know is that I have the exact same problem here.
The mac just doesn't do restarts...
And it also gets stuck during a PRAM reset. It gives me a black screen with ticking noises coming from the computer (the hard drive? I don't know).
I really don't know what to try next.

My graphics card is aRadeonX1900 and I have two 23inch Cinema Dispalys connected to it.

Maybe the problem lies there, maybe it's my videocard? I have a decklink HD Extreme Card installed. I notice it sometimes (once in, say, 10 times) doesn't startup well...