Frozen 2006 Mac Pro - won't boot past grey screen

Why do you keep then trying and not use your bootable clone backups, safe boot, Disk Utility from another drive or Disk Warrior to fix the drive or take it out and slap in a new one?

you can use mouse down to try to open the DVD on startup or mechanically access the drive door and 'pin' - for all the smooth exterior look, accessing DVD can be important... though they want the DVD to go away and die it seems.

yes the disk directory and the "?" on startup means you zapped pram and haven't reset the default control panel setting for setting startup disk.

sounds like you keep beating a dead horse to death with 10x and never once taking steps to resolve why.

Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

Using Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672

Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions 10.0-10.6 - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751

"Try Disk Utility" (modified from http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417)

Then boot in Safe Mode, (holding Shift key down at bootup; takes longer to boot this way so be patient), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.

Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107393

What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? (Mac OS X) - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564

Safe Boot takes longer than normal startup - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107394

Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5- Computer shuts down during Safe Boot - http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24054

If you don't have an installer disc available you can try effecting repairs using fsk in Single User Mode - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214.

Post by japamac about using fsk - http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1649143

Hold down Option as you start up. Thsi invokes the Startup Manager. It draws an Icon for each potentially bootable drive, then the Eject key goes "live" and that key can be used to open the DVD-reader drawer and insert the Installer/Utilities/Diagnostic DVD.

Your Mac should then allow you to proceed to the Installer/Utilities, but to run the diagnostic, you would have to Restart again and hold down the D key.

Yes, what you should have already: an alternate system boot drive.

Do an install on another drive. All you need is say 40GB is more than ample.

Just Mac Apple OS and any favorite tools you need to boot your system and run, not a full working OS with all the OS and stuff. THAT you can make by cloning this safe emergency boot system to another drive.

That way you have

a dead boot drive

a good emergency system for maintenance

a solid foundation for a system - and here you want about 200GB at most often much less for OS and apps.

You can then use your backup to import, migrate, and ONLY touch or import from the sick system drive essentail file that you did not backup or have elsewhere.

when a drive or system is sick the last thing you want to be doing is using it.

Disk utility has RESTORE which will also clone your system but not the Lion Recovery partition. Oddly Apple did not 'endorse' making bootable clone of the system which works too but most choose Carbon Copy Cloner - it works more consistently; it allows for smart update of the backup volume. Both can backup to a sparse disk image if desired.

Using Cloning as a Backup Strategy

http://www.bombich.com/software/updates/ccc-3.5.html

OS X Lion Install to Different Drive

How to create an OS X Lion installation disc MacFixIt

Migration Assistant Update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard

http://www.apple.com/support/lion/installrecovery/

Create an OS X Lion Install disc

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20080989-263/how-to-create-an-os-x-lion-ins tallation-disc

How to clone your system:

http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone-backup.html

http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone.html

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner

http://www.macperformanceguide.com/blog/2012/20120711_2-MacPro-internal-clone-ba ckup.html

You may of course need to pick up some new system and data drive to work with.

$100 buys: 1TB WD Black / 128GB SSD also a worthy system drive / 250GB WD 10K VelociRaptor are nice too.

Isolate the system and all your data and media files and have them on separate disk drives makes life easier - onlythe core /Users/KL_home_account_folder/Library

is needed on the system drive (makes life easy) and keep all the data safe and on separate disk drive - like WD Black 1 or 2TB for instance.

Use emergency system for maintenance

Also always clone your system to another drive before making changes or updates, that way you know yhou have a safe good bootable system - and in a pinch, you can reformat/erase and restore (system does not need to be backed up except for home email and such and CCC or Superduper can do that in under 10 minutes).

Fixing a sick drive when it FIRST happened can be done, but then it is like an onion or tangle of string that can't be pulled straight. The disk directory may not be easy and the journal can't fix.

There are 3rd party tools that can or have good chance but then the one I would use and recommend is $90, better to put that into a new drive unless you already have Alsoft Disk Warrior.

When the gear stops spinning, it initiates Mac OS X. In Safe Mode, it has completed a Disk Utility (Repair Disk ) and loaded minimal extensions. You should get a login screen next. In Safe Mode, it does not use accelerated graphics.

That may mean you have damage to your Mac OS X image, and may need to re-install.

It could also mean an undetected Hardware problem. Can you boot to the Installer/Utilities DVD?

that gave me, pretty quickly, a dark grey screen with the "You must restart your computer now"

"A Mac that will not boot from an appropriate Installer/Utilities DVD has a Hardware problem."

That kernel panic will be stored in a log, and if you can get it working can be read out and analyzed.

Whatever good things are said, it is VERY probably a dying harddisk. Before you do anything else: Backup as soon as possible, make more than one backup. Backup first your essential files, after that make a clone to avoid loosing a lot of time afterwards.

Good theory, but does not apply to this Mac.

The Mac Pro 65lb tower uses Error Correcting Code memory. Correctable errors are fixed on the fly, and uncorrectable errors cause a kernel panic. There are no gray areas as there are in Macs without Error Correction.

A Mac without enough memory to start up will sit there flashing its power-on light.

you have 2006 1,1 running olde 10.5.8

Get 10.6.x DVD from Apple

You could have a DVD that predates the graphic card and can't boot as it lacks the needed driver support.

TM is good for data but useless if you want to boot your system from something - and never have I had to go back and use DVD. CLONE and CLEAN SYSTEM INSTALL

Don't listen to students unless they really are familiar with workstations - yes once in awhile there are FBDIMM issues.

You could have parity errors and that led to corrupt directory and data - LOTS of things are of course possible.

A backup plan should be tested, know how to use under worst situation, be redundant, and not just one method, or one backup set.

Pull out all the hard drives, can be useful.

ATI Radeon 5770

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC742ZM/A

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/726537-REG/Apple_MC742ZM_A_ATI_Radeon_HD_5 770.html

How To Install and Remove Memory Mac Pro

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4433

http://www.amazon.com/BUFFERED-PC2-5300-FB-DIMM-APPLE-Memory/dp/B002ORUUAC/

WD Black 1TB $93

WD Green 3TB $149 - backup

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-Green-Desktop/dp/B004RORMF6/

WD VR 10K 250GB $103 200MB/sec boot drive :

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007V5A1BK/

Those last and last and make a nice boot drive.

SSD: Samsung 830 128GB $99

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0077CR60Q/

Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

The OEM 7300GT is dead and dying and you need ATI 5770 is one possible.

It is now rather common for people to hvae upgrade from the original GPU, neither of which kept up or lived up. So the minimal OS would have changed, such as mine was with 8800GT bought in 2008 req'd 10.5.2+ (10.5.6+ preferably)

The X1900 heat, dust and people upgraded w/ 4870 or other cards.

Upgrades over an old OS you begin to carry forware things that get in the way and cause conflict and now Setup Assistant makes it so easy makes more sense to start fresh.

Normally firmware of the Mac or controllers can limit what OS will boot.