2010 Mac Pro stuck before spinning wheel

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Level 1

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2010 Mac Pro stuck before spinning wheel

Hey all,

I recently had my Mac Pro crash (nothing out of the ordinary since Mavericks). However the problem is that now it will not boot up at all. I can't even get to the spinning wheel, just the grey screen, chime, but no spinning wheel. No keyboard commands work (safe mode PRAM etc etc) and no amounts of resets work. I have checked (but not changed) the SATA cable going into the SSD I have in the CD bay as a Boot up drive and that is fine, no excess dust as I regularly clean.

I am at a loss as to what to try next, any ideas??

Thanks all

Joe

Mac Pro 2.8 quad core, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jan 18, 2014 11:20 AM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Jan 18, 2014 11:31 AM in response to joe meredith

crash = corrupt directory and should use Recovery or Safe Boot, or both.the spinning wheel file system directory check may not be enough and need to restore from a restore kmage that oreceeded all of this.

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Answer 2

joe meredith Author

Level 1

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Jan 18, 2014 11:34 AM in response to The hatter

Unfortunately I cannot get into safe mode, or recovery, the machine is taking 0 input at any time, from the keyboard or the mouse, I have also tried my old hard disk that is still running mountain lion, and nothing from there. Seems more like some problem in the BIOS at startup

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Answer 3

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Jan 18, 2014 12:58 PM in response to joe meredith

unplug everything. Even PCIe cards and drive sleds. Use different keyboard and mouse. Using power on button for 10 seconds to reset SMC. Follow with multiple PRAM resets from COLD boot only until you get a good solid bong sounds within a couple seconds and another sound on restart so you have 2-3 restarts there, and no delay in bong sound.

Then one at a time put back your best good or only system, or get out flash installer for Lion or later and zero or format a drive and install OS. I had keyboard and SSD that affected NVRAM. Also got worse with Sonnet Tempo PCIe I installed. Went on for months. Then cleaned it up.

How to make your own bootable OS X 10.9 Mavericks USB install drive

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/how-to-make-your-own-bootable-os-x-10-9-mav ericks-usb-install-drive/

Apple has changed things in 10.9, but making a recovery drive is still possible.

And then use CCC to insure you have an unused good Apple-OS-only.

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