Multiple Start-Up Problems...

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Multiple Start-Up Problems...

I just started using these forums the other day and had tremendous help so I thought I'd bring up some troubling issues I've had for way too long.

First off, I haven't been able to address these issues when they first started happening almost a year ago (crazy, I know) because I've been working on a super important project and have had so many problems with the back ups, and everything else that I was too afraid to bring it in to a Genius for repair or to tinker around with it.

The project is now done and I need to solve this right away. Here are the issues:

- I have red lights on inside my Mac Pro whenever it is on at all times. I believe it's coming from the Risers.

- Whenever I do turn on my Mac Pro, the 'dong' mac sound that usually is heard once, is heard like 8-10 times before starting.

- When the computer finally boots up, immedietly I am greeted with an error message saying that one of my disks is not recognize and it gives me the option to ignore, initialize, or setup or something. I usually ignore, thought I've tried all options and it doesn't seem to make a difference.

- My computer needs to be cold booted down, and back on several times a day because it just freezes up completely, but only when it gets into sleep mode. I also can no longer turn it off or restart it or else it freezes. The ONLY thing I can do is hold down the power button on the tower. Otherwise it color wheels and freezes for an eternity.

These are issues that happen every single day, the freezing multiple times a day. All the time.

I know these are terrible signs, and I'm wondering what it has to do with. It seemed to all stem from when I ordered RAM. I put it in correctly, 1GB in all 8 slots for a total of 8. But the first two were not being recognized. Just today I switched it out to have 6GB total to find that the NEW first two don't work which means that it isn't the RAM that is bad, but those first two slots must need some repairing.

So I guess, if anyone knows any solutions to these above problems, and secondly, does anyone know the cost (I'm out of warranty) to repairing a Riser.

Any help would be great, thanks 🙂

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8), Final Cut, Color

Posted on Apr 21, 2011 8:21 PM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Apr 21, 2011 8:33 PM in response to Thirsty Robot

RAM or Riser can be the heart of a lot of problems and needs to be resolved to get to any deeper layer of the onion.

Risers can be advanced exchanged. Apple Hardware Test is simple, quick, and actually good for a Riser issue.

Mixing RAM can cause trouble at times, but sounds like it was all the same vendor and batch, but possible of course to have one or a pair be bad.

One way is 'binary' test of trying with 4 DIMMs first. Try a pair on each Riser (slots 1 & 2). Then try with all four on Riser A.

Swap Risers. Redo the above.

Then move on to the second set of 4 DIMMs.

If AHT (your OEM DVD 'd' on startup) has an error, I guess 'great' you have found one major problem and can be fixed.

If clean bill of health then try running Rember on your RAM. Quicker to test half your RAM at a time, and swap the two sets each time, so that is four runs. May seem like a lot but only way to really test. Or do all 8 on over night.

Memtest. you can run 32 concurrent runs easily of 250MB each for 5 loops from Terminal windows. Another way to test RAM.

Buy a new set of 8 x 2GB from Crucial.

OWC sells a lot but I also read of a lot of theirs failing after a year or two, FBDIMMs especially. Maybe 2008 was a bad year for RAM or something. 2000 was bad due to power outages in Taiwain I think.

Oh, yes, do you have 1500VA UPS? good protection insurance to keep things running.

SMCFanControl 2.x to keep things cool.

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