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pci pause: SDXC

I upgraded roughly 40 iMacs to Yosemite late last year. About 15% of them are having boot problems. Viewing the boot process in Verbose mode shows the process stalling with a 'pci pause: SDXC'. I have trawled the web and found very little info about this, I'm kind of surprised that it's not happening to others on a larger scale as I don't think I have anything unique going on with our Macs here. All the iMacs vary in age so it's not machine type specific [core 2 duo up to i7], some were upgraded from Lion, some from ML, some from Mav. Common 3rd party software is limited to MS Office 2011, Acrobat Reader, Firefox, Chrome, Symantec Endpoint and VLC player - not exactly dangerous stuff.

Posts on the web point to an fsck error specifically around kext. One helpful post suggested dumping the Startup folder from the System/Library/Caches folder. That does work, but just the once, as whatever error is causing the problem gets written again after startup and you are back to square one if you reboot. In some instances re-installing the system software works, but the problem has re-emerged in those instances too, so also back to square one.

I'm going to erase the HD on one iMac, do a fresh install and start installing site specific 3rd party software one by one, re-starting on each occasion to see if this problem occurs after a particular piece of software gets installed.


If anyone out there [hello Apple] has any info on this issue, I'd be glad to hear about it.

iMac, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), 2.7 Ghz i5, 16GB Ram

Posted on Jan 26, 2015 5:07 AM

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12 replies

Mar 11, 2015 7:07 AM in response to Neilo

I manage macs in public computing labs and am dealing with the same situation as mentioned above: Macs hanging at boot, in verbose mode it is always at: pci pause: SDXC. I have seen this with 10.10.0. 10.10.1 and now 10.10.2.


I do not use Symatecs.


I have also seen the posts pointing to fsck and 3rd party kernel extensions, tried the suggestions given therewith. But consistently after a few boots, the pci pause: SDXC reappears. Running fsck in Single User Mode will report modifying the hard drive, but does not resolve this issue. I do not have any 3rd party kernel extensions installed.


I have mostly Late 2013 iMacs, but this is also showing on older Late 2009 models.


I come across this whether upgrading from 10.8.5 or clean installs of Yosemite, and then a migration of 10.8.5. I have made sure to have the firmware (bootROM) versions the same on both the master image iMac and the client that I am cloning to.


After a successful restore some clients will reboot normally up to thirty or forty times, before pci pause: SDXC once again shows in verbose mode. *Sometimes the boot will continue after this first appearing again, but eventually, the boot will hang and I have no choice to back off to my reliable 10.8.5 image.


Any suggestions would be appreciated.


Cheryl

Apr 2, 2015 5:32 AM in response to Neilo

Hello,


As I'm using another mac to answer, I'm guessing the Apple's buy-again-and-again-plan runs perfectly !


The problem you describe is exactly the same I met one or two months ago.

I don't remember what happened just before (don't you ?), and the difference is that I'm using Mavericks, not Yosemite.


I just wanted to share with you my experience at this point.

I think I did almost everything I could to solve this problem, apart from cutting cables and desoldering partsā€¦

Cmd+S reboot then /sbin/fsck -fy (useless), Shift+S reboot (useless), Techtool Pro (all night long, useless), Apple Hardware Test (useless), Time machine backup (it lasts until the next reboot).. even a clean install (it lasts more).


The clean install was 2 days ago..

After the clean install, I restarted my computer several times.

Today I just restarted my computer after installing iLife 09 (I need both versions, this one and the new one), then the deadly pci pause reappeared !


My configuration :

Mac mini mid-2011

Mavericks

ā€¦ and a SDXC slot !


Few minutes ago, I tried to insert a SDXC card in the dedicated slot, here is the reaction (verbose)

AppleSDXCSlot : : setPowerState(0x3674437f[ā€¦]b3, 1 -> 3) timed out after 30384 ms

then, after few seconds, back to normalā€¦

pci pause: SDXC

I don't think there is a link with softwares installations.

I'm not a technician, but it doesn't really make sense, does it ?

Actually, I have no idea what's happening here, and I'm desperate..

I hate this brand more and more every day !


Please, help ! (my diploma is in the computerā€¦)

Apr 11, 2015 7:37 PM in response to francoisbernard

I don't see any evidence that this pci pause: SDXC is "deadly." I get this in console every single time the computer wakes up, even the nightly, lid closed, "wake ups" that my MacBook Pro cycles through on Yosemite 10.10.3 (pro - mid 2012, but purchased new 2014 to have the disc optical drive). I see the message, but don't see any evidence of wake up or boot hangs. Everything works. It's not exactly a new thread, but if you're still around, are you having issues with booting up, or is booting up just slowed down? I know this computer takes longer to boot that my older MB Pro running 10.6.8, but Yosemite is a whole different giant beast, so I just assume it takes longer. It isn't a bother for me. This forum is full of questions from people like me who look at Console, All messages, and see all sorts of things that they (I) don't understand, and find the messages suspicious or frightening. I don't know nearly enough to claim that this message is or isn't related to some behavior you're witnessing, but I see the message too and am not experiencing any noticeable problems with how the laptop boots and works. No help, I know, but wanted to say that this console message appears every time I lift the lid and wake the Mac up but see no behavior that would indicate it's anything to worry about.

Apr 14, 2015 5:51 AM in response to jjrrss

Hello, thank you for your answer.


Actually, yes, it's no help ! (kiddin') šŸ˜ šŸ˜ šŸ˜


The message (pause pci) is the last one I can read on the screen, in verbose mode.

In very rare cases, after 2 hours or so, the computer finishes booting process. But I tried that once, because i can't wait two hours every day so I force the computer to shut down (and buy a new oneā€¦ ā€” joke !)


I'm using a Mac mini 2012, with Mavericks. I won't upgrade to Yosemite right now, because i'm too frightened to lose everything :

My macbook pro died after upgrading to mavericks, which had an issue with Mail, so the graphic card (which was a bit too sensitive) died.

It was a Macbook pro 2011, with graphic card failure, Apple just recognizedā€¦ after more than a year of fight. It's right now on repairing.

So I won't upgrade to Yosemite until I passed my diploma.


Plus, everything worked fine with mavericks, so I can't tell if it's linked to mavericks especially, or if upgrading to Yosemite could solve the problem. If you have the same message on Yosemite, maybe I will have the same problem.


So, everything worked fine until the day it went wrong.

I really have no idea what clue I can share with you, to help you understand the cause.

Maybe it's not the PCI pause, but the next process, which can't load. But as I can't read it on the screen, I can't tell you which one it isā€¦

I tried to start with and without a SD card in the slot, I tried to reinstall. Nothing works.

The fact that reinstalling helped only for two days scared me, because, intuitively, for me it means that it's (again) an hardware issue (as for my MBP 2011 with graphic failures).


Right now my school helps me and gave my an iMac so I can keep working, but it's a shame Apple can't propose quality products anymore. I mean, if at least the quality had increased as did the price, I could agree with that, but here, quality took the opposite path !


Thank you for your help


Best regards

Oct 29, 2015 2:03 PM in response to drikosev

As it seems the Vodafone installer/uninstaller had put/left some inconsistent or incompatible files (ZTE* and Novatel* ) in System/Library/Extensions which blocked the boot process.


Having allready deleted manually from my system everything like Vodafone*, I rebooted in Recovery mode and removed also everything like ZTE* and Novatel* under System/Library/Extensions, which finally solved the problem and OS X 10.10 boots normally again.


The internet connection now works fine but only with the older app that comes with the USB stick (k5008z).

pci pause: SDXC

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