My Mac Pro spontaneously restarts

My early 2008 Mac Pro was shutting down from sleep both when I activated it, and then later by itself. Recently it refused to turn on, shuts down after about 3 seconds, light goes off, fans stop.

Took it in and they replaced the GPU card and PSU. Things were great ... for two weeks. Then suddenly the same symptoms, but at an accelerated rate of occurance. After a day, it did not power on at all save the three seconds of startup fans.

Took it in again. They AGAIN replace the known-faulty ATI Radeon HD2600 XT cards (two), the ones Apple have agreed to replace up to July 2011.

Well got the machine back and she worked like a charm... for two weeks. Same thing now. By the way all checks of hardware, ram disk drives - extensively have come up OK.

Does anyone have any advice, or have the same problem?

If it is the logic board, is it worth it to replace or when things go south like this is it better to cut your losses as more and more will likely go wrong?

Would appreciate any feedback.

Many thanks

Hi

I have MacPro C723 just a month old and am getting those restarts ,,, its not a hardware thingy cause I have dual boot with Win7 and it never restarts when using Windows. I will have to re-install my OS as advised .. clean install and get back to you guys if interested.

I had a few spontaneous restarts, but they were the summit of a series of troubles (crashes and odd behavior like spontaneous waking up) I had with my Mac Pro 3,1 (early 2008).

I found out it sometimes didn't recognized a chunk of it's SDRAM. It had 8 GB but sometimes in the 'about this Mac' it said 6.

I did all kinds of tests with testing software but it almost impossible to test this. Also, different orders of memory modules had different effects: Placing them in a certain order, they were more stable. Could work fine for days or even a week or two.

However, memory problems, like hd problems, always get worse over time. Finally I send the 6 GB back I had bought at OWC. They returned 6 new GB modules under lifetime warranty. I've been using them for almost a week now and so far the problem seems solved. Just my € 0,02

I'm having the same issue, I have reset Pram and SMC but it did it again this morning.

I have a 2x2.8 quad Xeon Mac Pro (spring 2008) and have just encountered a problem over the last few days where the machine restarts completely un-prompted and for no apparent reason.

This can happen at any time. Other times the screen goes blank and the machine still seems to be 'on' but then needs to be shut down by holding the power key down.

Incredibly frustrating as my applecare has run out now.

Any and all ideas appreciated.

Hi

I have posted earlier that i am having same problem with my MacBook Pro I tried resseting PRAM and SMC it did not work. Finaly few weeks back I did a clean re-install after formatting the HD. And it never happend again ever since (touch wood 🙂).

SO usually its a system file that is missing or corrupted.

Hello everyone! Can you resolve the problem reported? In february , I had 4 equipment’s with these identical and same problem, some worse than others, and only two barely functioning, others was stopped. They power on normally and suddenly alone they power off , and after that I only can power on again , after hours waiting or only the next day , and when it's power on , on startup , they give me a long beep , before the chime , then I can work for a time (minutes or longtime , it's not secure) . I've sent them to an Apple Authorized Center ,and I had the following diagnostics , have to change the logic board of all and the some have too to change de power supply . And the problem occurred because of electrical problems .

All places where I have my equipment’s (they are in 4 different places, but I but I have tested them in all four locations) , are electrically grounded , the electrical network stabilized , reviewed annually and I use UPS minimum of 1.5 KVA(I have two UPS of 3.75 KVA) . I tested with the original HDD , with all the applications that I use installed , only with the system installed and the same procedure on a new HDD and got the same result . So , it is not electrical problem . I have iMacs , MacBooks , G5 and MacPro early 2009 working in the same places with no problems . I tested all the sites with three different electricians and all approved my Electricnetworks . As I know, all Apple equipment have

surge protection, precisely to prevent the components from being damaged by electrical problems.Again , it is not electrical problem .

How it's so expensive to do this , until now I'm trying to find cheaper solutions .I've cleaned all parts with products that gives better contact and that protect against the oxidation , some equipment’s gave me a survival for a while , but presented the problem again .

I talked with Apple Computer (from USA) and they do not assume that the problem exists and that many users have the same problem, worldwide. Now I have more 2 equipment’s and others 4 friends with the same problem , here in my city , and have heard about others owners from here , that already have had the same problem .So , only in my city , more than 20 Mac Pros (early 2008) have had the same problem .

If you're not satisfied with the result of Apple, we will have to press them to assume the defect and promote a recall on these equipment’s. We have many users with the same issue (MacPro off alone) .

OK, I may (repeat may) have progress here. I have recently started using an iphone 4 and I notice it happens more when the iphone is plugged in and charging off the mac.

My memory replacements didn't solve the problem. I had 3 kernel panics one night, but sometimes it works fine for days. I keep an eye on the temperatures but can't find any relation.

Last few days, I have more and more problems with USB: half of the time, the printer, USB sticks etc won't work. Then again, after a sleep/wake sometimes they work fine…

Most often it's due to a failing PSU from experience.

That's just the problem. AppleCare acts like they've never heard of the problem. There are threads upon threads of people complaining about a small set of grave problems, of people experiencing the same things, then you talk to AppleCare and it's like they never read these logs to see what is happening with MBP.

I was having the same problem for the past week. Thanks to some of the advice here, and from other friends, I seemed to have solved the problem, for me at least, touch wood.

I opened up my mac pro and cleaned out all the dust and crap that had accumulated. Then i pulled everything apart and carefully reseated everything piece by piece, and finally i switched my Apple monitor to the second port on my graphics card - since then I've had the computer running without any sudden restarts - only a day so far but thats some progress at least - if the problem re-occurs ill be sure to let you all know.

Hope this helps

S