Mac Pro Only Boots in Safe Mode - GeForce 7300 issue?

WOW - I am so glad I just found this thread. I have the EXACT same weird issue with my 3.0ghz dual quad core MacPro2,1. It boots into safe mode only... in "non-safe" mode I get a duplicate cursor when I move it, then it turns into an endless beach ball at the grey screen after the Apple logo and just hangs. I was convinced it was the logic board, so rather than attempt at replacing it, I bought a new Mac Pro last weekend! I just swapped out the video card from the new Mac Pro (ATI Radeon HD 5770) and it booted up fine. Amazing! The price of a new video card is much less than $3,500. Whew. 🙂

Thanks so much!

vmalmgren wrote:

For what it's worth, after doing some research I was actually able to repair my 7300GT. Turns out it's well documented that two of the capacitors on the board fail. If you have a soldering iron it's pretty easy to replace them. I'd never done any thing like it before and it worked out fine. I replaced the two capacitors and my computer booted up with no issues. Problem solved.

I'm curious. I made sure to get my 1,1 Mac Pro with the 7300GT specifically because it was the only video card that didn't rely on its own fan for cooling (I'd had fan failures on previous video cards). I've noticed that default fan speed vs temperature settings in the Mac Pro tend to emphasize quiet over cooling and so have consistently used smcFanControl to monitor and control fan speed to keep operating temperatures down. I only recently upgraded to a 5,1 6 core Mac Pro and never had the 7300GT troubles discussed in this thread. Is it possible that the capacitor failures were in any way related to temperature levels maintained by the default fan speeds?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3445644?tstart=0

you are now using an ATI 5770 and the problems with lead contacts and solder and Nvidia that they had then and with the 8800GT.

Fans are great. So are double width cards. Built properly though, not like the ATI X1900 and others.

The hatter wrote:

you are now using an ATI 5770 and the problems with lead contacts and solder and Nvidia that they had then and with the 8800GT.

Fans are great. So are double width cards. Built properly though, not like the ATI X1900 and others.

I special ordered the 5870 and have been concerned about both fan reliability (having had one fail on an SGI graphics card years ago) and the possibility of it clogging with dust, given that it's largely enclosed, but there's no longer any no-fan option.

In any case, could the higher temperatures resulting from quiet fan settings aggravate the deficiencies of those ATI cards?

These are the exact same issues I'm going through and it seems the original Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT card is the culprit. I don't have money for a new video card. It's the first thing I'm going to try to get my Mac Pro back.

Quick question to the original Poster of this thread. I did see the "mouse can move, but leavess a copy of itself" in the top left hand corner. Did you see a stripped dotted lines just hanging to the bottom right hand side of the curos itself? I posted a pic on my own thread.

It starting to look more and more like the Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT is the culprit in my situation. There's too many common factors among other Mac Pro 1.1 owners who seem to have solved their boot up problems after switching video cards.

Hi,

I had the exact same problem that you had and fixed by deleting all the extention files from System/Library/Extentions. The system started up normally again.

I moved NV* and GeF* from /System/Library/Extensions

These were Extensions I removed

NVDANV40Hal.kext

NVDANV50Hal.kext

NVDAResman.kext

NVSMU.kext

GeForce.kext

GeForce7xxxGLDriver.bundle

GeForceGA.plugin

GeForceGLDriver.bundle

GeForceVADriver.bundle

Eliminating those extensions means you get no graphics acceleration. That correlates with Safe Mode (which does not load those extensions) operation. It works, but is not hardware accelerated.

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I'm still stuck as I have formatted the OS hard drive and can't even get it to install again from my Snow Leopard disk let alone boot into Safe Mode to do anything. You still have your NVidia graphics card in your Mac Pro?

So what exactly happens if I were to remove those extension and my "hardware is not accelerated"?

I finally narrowed down to the particular extension, GeForce 7xxx.kext.

My mac pro only freezes when this extension is loaded.

Does this mean that my NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT is corrupted or NVIDIA needs to issue an update for this extension?

Any suggestions?

So the display RAM is working, and the primitive way of talking to the card (used by the diagnostic, by Safe Mode and when you delete extensions) is working.

When you put the card on "full speed, automatic" (which occurs on the Apple screen when the "loading" gear stops turning) the display stops working.

I'd say your card has probably had it, and you should look at getting a new card.

This card is no longer for sale as new. Don't hold your breath waiting for NVIDIA to issue any new extensions. And even if they did, it would not fix your problem.

I'm just reposting links - for information purpose only - what dust looks like.

I remember the first time I saw a G5 impacted with dust everywhere.

What six years can mean to a cpu heatsink:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=14701569#post14701569

PSU for some serious build up also

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=14701467#post14701467

As it turns out after saving and scraping the money I bought the ATI Radeon 5770 video car. Plugged it in and BAM!! I can boot into the Lion drive I had managed to install last time, but without my personal files. That's still on the external back up drive. Just shuffling drives and I'll be back to normal. Stiil pretty pricey to have my beloved Mac Pro back.

A friend with the same Mac Pro 1.1 faster CPUs went with 8800 card and managed to work. She wants the 5770 too, but had to get by with the 8800 for her web designing business.

It's going to be hard spending the money since I have a 35 mile a day commute for work, but I needed my Mac back.