Mac Pro 5,1 Freezes & Pinwheels at Boot, Corrupt Font to Blame?

The fonts are incompatible and need to be removed from the System fonts folder. That is the solution.

Duplicate fonts can be a problem especially if they are system fonts. Not all fonts in the Fonts folder are used by OS X, but certain ones are standard OS X fonts that are loaded at every boot. Geneva is one of them. If you have another Geneva font (regardless of its filename) then it needs to be removed.

Repairing permissions is not going to help since the error is not a permissions error. Reinstalling OS X won't help either unless you erase the disk first. Reinstalling over the existing system will simply leave whatever the problem is in place.

Install or Reinstall Mavericks, Lion/Mountain Lion from Scratch

Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.

Boot to the Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Erase the hard drive:

1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.

2. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the

left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.

3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on

the Security button and set the ZeroData option to one-pass. Click on

the Erase button and wait until the process has completed.

4. Quit DU and return to the main menu.

Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion, Mavericks and click on the Install button.

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible

because it is three times faster than wireless.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

The login screen appears even if you usually login automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.

First check that you still can't boot as usual. If you can't, see below.

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

Note: If you have more than one user account, Step 2 must be taken as an administrator. Ordinarily that would be the user created automatically when you booted the system for the first time. Step 1 should be taken as the user who has the problem, if different. Most personal Macs have only one user, and in that case this paragraph doesn’t apply.

Triple-click anywhere in the line of text below on this page to select it:

PB="/u*/*/Pl* -c Print"; { echo Loaded kernel extensions:; kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf "%s %s\n", $6, $7}'; echo $'\nLoaded user agents:'; launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple|org\.(x|openbsd)|\.[0-9]+$/{print $3}'; echo $'\nInserted libraries:'; launchctl getenv DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES; echo $'\nUser cron tasks:'; crontab -l; echo $'\nGlobal launchd configuration:'; cat /e*/lau*; echo $'\nPer-user launchd configuration:'; cat .lau*; echo $'\nGlobal login items:'; $PB /L*/P*/loginwindow.plist | awk -F'= ' '/Path/{print $2}'; echo $'\nPer-user login items:'; $PB L*/P*/com.apple.loginitems.plist | awk -F'= ' '/Path/{print $2}'; echo $'\nSafari extensions:'; $PB L*/Saf*/*/E*.plist | awk -F'= ' '/Bundl/{print $2}' | sed 's/\..*$//;s/-[1-9]$//'; printf "\nRestricted user files: %s\n" $(find ~ $TMPDIR.. \( -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 \) | wc -l); echo $'\nExtrinsic loadable bundles:'; cd; find -L /S*/L*/E* {,/}L*/{Ad,Compon,Ex,In,Keyb,Mail/Bu,P*P,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo}* -type d -name Contents -prune | while read d; do /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print :CFBundleIdentifier' "$d/Info.plist" | egrep -qv "^com\.apple\.[^x]|Accusys|ArcMSR|ATTO|HDPro|HighPoint|driver\.stex|hp-fax|JMicron|print|SoftRAID" && echo ${d%/Contents}; done; echo $'\nUnsigned shared libraries:'; find /u*/{,*/}lib -type f -exec sh -c 'file -b $1 | grep -qw shared && ! codesign -v $1' {} {} \; -print; echo; ls -A {,/}L*/{La,Priv,Sta}* L*/Fonts; } 2> /dev/null | open -ef

Remember that you must be logged in as an administrator for this step. Do as in Step 1 with this line:

{ echo "Loaded system agents:"; sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.(apple|openssh|vix\.cron)|org\.(amav|apac|cups|isc|ntp|postf|x)/{print $3}'; echo $'\n'"Login hook:"; sudo defaults read com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook; echo $'\n'"Root cron tasks:"; sudo crontab -l; echo $'\n'"Log check:"; syslog -k Sender kernel -k Message CReq 'GPU |hfs: Ru|I/O e|find tok|n Cause: -|NVDA\(|pagin|timed? ?o' | tail | awk '/:/{$4=""; print}'; } 2> /dev/null | open -ef

You can then quit Terminal.

Note: If you don’t have a login password, set one before taking Step 2. If that’s not possible, skip the step.

Remember, Steps 1 and 2 are all copy-and-paste — no typing, except your password. Also remember to post the output as text, not as a screenshot.

If it's working now, you don't have to do anything else. The safe boot rebuilt some caches, and sometimes that's all it takes.