Mac Pro slow start up

Question

Level 1

0 points

Mac Pro slow start up

I got a problem with my Mac Pro 4.1, when I turn on the mac the chime sounds after 20 - 30 secs and later on the white or gray screen appears. I had reset the PRAM, changed the coin battery, tested with the "Apple Hardware Test" (no problem at all). I have 20Gb (4X4GB, 4X1GB) of Ram, five hard drives attached to it. I thought that the problem was the hard drive with the OSX (10.8.2), got changed with a new one with a new OSX on it, two hard drives of 2Tb with RAID "lvl 1", two hard drives of 640Gb. When my mac goes to sleep, sometimes when I try to wake it up I hear the sound that wokes up but got no image on display, so I have to force shut down and then turn it on again.

I try dettaching all the hard drives except the one that has the OSX, thought it might be problem of the RAID. I did experiment that my mac freezed and then restart.

Please someone help me with this problem!

Specs Mac Pro 4.1

- 2.26ghz x 2 "8 - core"

- 20gb ram (I recently upgraded my ram from 6Gb)

- 1Tb HDD

- 2Tb HDD x 2 (RAID 1)

- 640Gb HDD x 2

- NVIDIA GT 120 x 2

- OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.2

Sorry for my english that is not so good.

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Nov 9, 2012 10:50 PM

Reply

Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Nov 10, 2012 6:55 AM in response to LZJ905

10.8.2 does not like 2xGT120s

Mirror RAID is of dubious value.

Normally system maintenance as in Safe Boot, repair directory, etc.

Power Management (sleep, power on, etc) are getting to be more common but on 2008, not 4,1 2009s.

Force Shutdowns WILL corrupt the boot directory.

Clone or do a clean install and test your system with just Apple Mac OS basics.

And of course you bought ECC certified for Mac Pro DDR3.

Reply

Answer 2

LZJ905 Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 10, 2012 7:53 AM in response to The hatter

Hi The hatter

Ok, I have two GT120s I will try to work just with one GT120 I got. I did a clean install with the default settings that comes with my mac when I bought it. I know that force shutdowns is dangerous, but I tried to restart it with commands and didn't works. I bought ram from OWC, that problem I am experimenting is before I upgrade the ram, so it couldn't be the problem.

I did try cloning the boot drive but there was a problem with the HDD, so I bought a new one and install a clean copy of OSX, I thought that, that could solve my problem, then I realized that it didn't solved because a still experimenting the problem.

I not really sure if the problem comes out with the 10.8.2, I don't remember.

Reply

Answer 3

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Nov 10, 2012 8:39 AM in response to LZJ905

Snow Leopard seems to be the most solid OS.

SSDs can be iffy.

Anyone's RAM can cause or be a problem.

But you said it started before those.

"problem with the hard drive..." is too general and really rare. You would have to have bad sectors or something and not been able to map those out. Any drive can ship that way (not just mapped out at the factory). Zero all from Disk Utilty is not guarantee to resolve those.

Also rare to have a clone not work, SSDs being likely candidate and finiky.

Using Cloning as a Backup Strategy

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.1

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

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

Repairing permissions in Single User Mode - http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7117122

Mac Running Slow: General Tips & Advice (Kappy)

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4214422?

Reply

Answer 4

LZJ905 Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 10, 2012 10:47 AM in response to The hatter

I forgot metion that one day I have install windows 7 with bootcamp and that fix the problem for a time, but it comes up again. In that moment I thought that could be problem of finding the bootable drive. It works for a while with a bootcamp unit in the mac.

I will going to buy a SSD in the near future, no budget for a SDD. Does my mac works with SDD with SATA III 6Gb o just SATA II 3Gb? I did some research about that, I do realice that my version of mac pro just have SATA II but many disscusions don't say about, if HDD and SSD with SATA III works in SATA II interface. I found that it works but it won't works as a bootable HDD, still dubious with that info.

I have always verify and reparir permissions of the hard drive, I'm going to try it in Safe Mode or Single User Mode.

Reply

Answer 5

The hatter

Level 9

60,980 points

Nov 10, 2012 11:35 AM in response to LZJ905

Permissions in your case are basically useless. I was talking about the directory that you are corrupting over time.

There are too many threads about SSD - they work is all you need - by goodness goes back 4 yrs already using SSDs of all shapes and sizes.

I never put Windows on same drive as OS X.

Reset the control panel in Windows or Mac for Startup Disk and make sure it is set to what you want (move away and back even).

If you have Lion, use Recovery Mode. If not, boot off a clone. If not a clone, make a small 30GB emergency Mac partition - on another drive (timemachine is actually useful place).

Reply

Answer 6

LZJ905 Author

Level 1

0 points

Nov 10, 2012 10:15 PM in response to The hatter

The windows partition is in other hard drive. I have try everything you told me what could solve the problem but still no results, I will have to try with a SSD.

Thanks.

Reply