Mac Pro startup problem

I had the same issue. Reseated the HDD and restarted and it has not come back. Had the pro almost a week now and only 2 or 3 reboots since then.

Launch System Preferences, then select the Startup Disk preference pane. Make sure that your boot volume is selected. then try restarting. If that corrects the problem in subsequent re-boots, then somehow the startup disk got reset to a different drive.. Maybe you were installing bootcamp (which will set the Startup drive to the bootcamp partition) or you have or had other startup volumes at one time.

Give that a shot, can't hurt.

Tom N.

I'm having the same problem, sometimes takes 2-3 forced restarts to get it to boot after it's been turned off. I have boot camp installed. It didn't start doing it until after the latest firmware update. I haven't tried hitting the reset button on the motherboard that controls power managment, that fixed an earlier problem I had when it wasn't waking from sleep before the latest firmware update.

If anyone has found a fix, please post it.

Make sure that a startup OS is selected in the Startup Disk System Preference. The folder and question mark at startup is usually a sign that an OS is not specifically chosen (termed "blessed") for default booting. Reselecting it Startup Disk usually fixes this.

startup disk settings are, i believe, still stored in pram, so zapping that will help if reselecting a disk in the startup disk prefpane doesnt work. to zap the pram you should boot up the computer with command-option-p-r held down (all at once) and keep those keys held down until youve heard the boot tone twice. the second tone should be louder, and ive had to hold the keys down til i hear the tone three times on my mac pro, although 2 should be enough.