Early Mac Pro - Gray Screen Regardless

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Early Mac Pro - Gray Screen Regardless

Early intel Mac Pro started displaying gray screen and refusing to boot. At first it would boot into safe mode and from DVD. Than it wouldn't boot at all.

Pulled all drives, disconnected all peripherals, am using an Apple keyboard mouse and monitor.

The internal DVD hasn't functioned in some time so i purchased a replacement yesterday along with some new drives.

After installing the new DVD burner (LG) and 1 new HD (1TB) I started the computer and found that the DVD still doesn't function.

The old DVD was ide the new one is sata.

Attempting to boot from the install disk in an axternal DVD fails to a gray screen after the Apple logo displays.

And that's all she wrote.

I'm assuming I probably need a new logic board. Or could memory manifest these problems? I think some of it may not be Apple.

What do you think?

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Apr 19, 2013 8:12 AM

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Answer 1

Mnatco Author

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Apr 19, 2013 8:46 AM in response to Mnatco

Update.

Pulled both memory boards and tried them independantly. One of them just causes the power light to blink, so I assume that's bad. Put the other board in and manually opened the internal DVD (it runs, it just doesn't respond to keyboard or mouse on startup) and tried booting from the install disc.

Booting normally or with the option/alt key starts the process but either way it fails to a blank momentarrily blue than gray screen.

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Answer 2

Mnatco Author

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Apr 20, 2013 9:49 PM in response to Mnatco

To recap.

1. Gray screen.

2. One memory bank causes the power light to blink and the screen does nothing.

3. Optical drive is inaccessible by keyboard but can be manually accessed.

Took it to the Apple store.

Bad Video card caused all the problems except optical drive which was a bad keyboard.

$249.00 later I'm good as new.

Who'da thunk it?

Mick

PS $249.00 at MicroCenter, $400+ at the Apple store. They charged me nothing for the analysis.

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