User profile for user: William Kaminski
William Kaminski Author
User level: Level 1
23 points

Must press power key 3 times on 2010 mac pro to boot

I need to press the power button on the front of my 2010 mac pro 3 times to start and power up my computer. Also, my machine will not "wake up" if placed in sleep mode - I have to hold the power button until the computer turns off. I've tried unplugging the machine to reset the power management on it without success. One time only I pressed the "cuda" button on the logic board to reset power management + pressing the restart button on the logic board (with the machine "unplugged"). After closing up and immediately upon plugging in the power cord the mac pro started up immediately and once again, required pressing the power button 3x to power on & boot afterwords. Multiple hard drives with a range of OS's from Snow Leopard to Mavericks with (10 GB's RAM) makes no difference in starting up the machine; it still requires pressing the power button 3x.

Has anyone else ever had this problem and found how to fix their computer?

Thanks in advance for suggestions or info.

Bill K

Mac Pro (Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.2), 2.8 GHz quad core xeon

Posted on Nov 2, 2014 11:22 AM

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User profile for user: William Kaminski
William Kaminski Author
User level: Level 1
23 points

Nov 3, 2014 11:55 AM in response to BDAqua

Thank you for your reply BDAqua, and link to OWC compatible batteries. I forgot to mention I replaced my mac pro's battery about a month ago when I tried pressing the cuda & restart buttons on the motherboard. Last week I unplugged the mac pro for a few days after a power outage. When I plugged the machine back into its UPS power supply, it booted up on the very first press of the power button. After shutting down the mac pro went back to booting every third press.


Because of the "workarounds" it seems like the solution could be simple, or drastic - like replacing the logic board. When the mac pro is "shut down," power is still flowing through attached external devices: an iogear mouse/keyboard/monitor sharing switch and USB external hard drive have their LED's on. I have the same iogear keyboard/monitor switch on my macbook pro & a pc; when the computers are shut down, there are no lit LED's.


The mac pro seens to be "screaming," power management problem.


Bill K

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User profile for user: notcloudy
notcloudy
User level: Level 4
1,252 points

Sep 26, 2015 12:54 PM in response to dfmarks

dfmarks wrote:


Bill, did you ever get a successful resolution? My mid-2010 Mac Pro has been doing the exact same thing or over a year....and it won't auto-start using the power mgt settings, either

The power button was made into a sleep button - if you want to shut down your mac with the power button you have to hold the button in for about 15 seconds -- best to use the Apple menu to shut down -- In snow leopard after I discovered this little surprise - was able in power save to change it back to shutdown.


As I always shut off the power to the outlet after shutdown (or shut the spikestick off) -- on occasion the system has come back up with a crash report - do to me being a bit too speedy on shutting the wall switch off before complete shut down -- seems to happen if I don't dismount my time machine backup before doing a backup to another removable drive & usually is a deadlock on something.

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User profile for user: jacde
jacde
User level: Level 1
4 points

Dec 9, 2016 10:18 PM in response to notcloudy

OMG, I had tried everything. I'm helping a friend with their 2010 MAC Pro tower and the power button hasn't been working for a long time. They even had the power supply replaced at some repair shop. I'm doing some RAM and drive upgrades and in the meantime I have been searching posts to figure it out. Every time I needed to start I had to kill the power and then press the power button, one long press and one short press. Then I found your post. The power button was in fact changed to be a sleep button. I never would have thought this. Thank you so much!!!! I could kiss you right now. LOL

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Must press power key 3 times on 2010 mac pro to boot

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