mac pro (2008) won't start - led flashes

the power button simply flashes

• One short flash followed by a longer off period:

I see no differtence between these symptoms.

Is your situation somehow different ?

The conventional way to proceed when you have no chime is to remove all items that may be dragging down the power supply if they were malfunctioning.

Remove:

Hard drives

optical drives

PCI slot cards including the graphics card

all the memory except the minimum -- be sure to remove and re-insert each module that remains, to clear corrosion. If your Mac has separate riser cards, remove and re-insert them as well.

Try to start up again, looking for the chime.

A) If you get the chime, add the graphics card so you can see what is happening. The minimum needed to do something is to start up while holding down the Option key, to run the [all-in-ROM] Startup Manager. It will show a blue screen and an image for each bootable drive (there won't be any yet).

Then add in the optical drive and attempt to boot from an Installer/Utilities DVD appropriate for your Mac, or try the Apple Hardware Test DVD (and hold down the D key as you start up, as it says on the face of the DVD).

B) If you don't get the chime, it's off to the repair shop.

Have you looked inside to see if any of the diagnostic leds are lit? There's some near the dim slots and I believe a about 9 or so in a strip somewhere (?) on the processor board.

My 2008 Mac Pro has identical problem, fan whires, no chime, and continuosly blinking front LED, can't eject DVD --what was the verdict on your machine? Tonight I will undue all memory cards etc and try to troubleshoot.

Same here, I pulled ram and a OWC pair was bad, replacements here Monday - wish it hadn't happened, but OWC does back up their products.

Thanks,

I had a pair of Kingston RAM not working ! Remove them and It's fix !