mac pro late 2013 freezes with spinning wheel

I am having exactly the same problem with mauro16.

My mac pro 2013 hang several times a day. Checking with console show "Surface testing disallowed updates for 10 sequential attempts".

This problem drives me crazy. I lose my job before saving and have to redo again over and over.

I wish there is someone find the solution soon.

Kitti,

Have you updated to 10.11.2? I had Surface Testing lock-up problems too on 10.11.1, but they went away after updating to 10.11.2. I still need to disallow my Mac Pro from sleeping and set my Display to never turn off.

Good Luck!

Thanks Paul for the advise. I don't have problem with sleeping energy save.

My OS is 10.11.2 latest.

I have try to delete Flash player cache.

Also Max advise

From Applications/Utilites, launch Terminal.

In the Terminal type:

sudo nvram boot-args="dart=0x0"

and when it asks for your password, enter your password.

Then restart your Mac.

It worked the 1st day I did. After 2nd day it got crazy again.

I retype the reset video card in Terminal again. Zap PRAM.

It is new year so no time to use the machine. Just hope it will solve.

This is the worst mac hardware I have ever used within 25 years mac experience.

Best regards,

Kitti

The 1st working day after long holiday is nightmare.

My mac pro 2013 frozen many many times. Zap PRAM doesn't help.

Reset video card by type command in terminal doesn't work.

Reinstall the OS doesn't work.

I really have no idea what to do. May be I have to send back to apple for service.

Anyone has solution please please help me out.

Best regards,

Kitti

After New Year I sent my Mac Pro 2013 back to apple for service.

After 2 weeks it was done. They replaced the video board.

It is working fine now. Never have any crash again.

Thanks to apple for good service.

I still wonder how this machine pass QC.

It was bad since the 1st day I have bought.

After 8 months of nightmare, Apple has replaced the Mac Pro with a new one. Finally now I can work!

Hello, I have saw that Apple is doing an action of replace the Mac Pro 2013 AMD D500 and D700 program about having freezing and video problem.But the program is not including the D300 mac pro which I bought it last year in Taiwan.I got some same issue of freezing and shutting down problem,and I saw a lot of people having the same issue too with the D300 on the internet. I think there is some problem with the mac pro 2013 and the AMD graphic card.Now I just want to know how to solve the problem of this machine to let it be stable for me to work.I want to know who has the same problem like me with the D300 6 core mac pro,and how can I do to replace a new graphic card in Taiwan.I hope Apple could add the D300 mac pro to the replace program.

If you have a problem that can be reproduced, you may have a failure in the graphics card or its RAM. That would likely be a SAMPLE DEFECT -- a problem in only YOUR system, not every system.

Take it to your Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple store for an evaluation.

I have thought the problem was solved on my last post after sending to Apple for service.

Yesterday I happened again but only once.

dedefawj I recommend you send your mac to Apple for service.

I have the d300 6core. With the GPU appears to be hung crash.

I just got off the phone with apple and said they will be sending a repair person to look at it during business hours. Brilliant!

It was a 30mins call asking what u have tried to debug.

But also note that this is an unpredictable crash and there are many cases where people brought in their nmp multiple times for repair with legit apple store, and still experience the same crash.

So the most cliche solution to you is bring it in to apple repair people and hope for the best that you dont spend hours explaining an unpredictable crash, and then maybe get a non-crashing machine if u r lucky. Because this GPU crash is not an isolated problem. Also an unpredictable one.

I on the other hand would try a call to apple 1st. That way you can plan your time if your nmp is a working machine. Its a considerable effort for a work machine, but I think best for the current situation

I've had the exact problem described by Mauro16, Slokkie, (and others) on my Mac Pro which I took delivery of in Mar of 2014. It has the D300's.

Because knew I'd bought a version one of the new machine, I've patiently waited for all the OS updates figuring it was a driver issue they'd catch pretty quick. I've also tried everything in this thread as well as all the conventional stuff (SMC, Pram, clean install, etc.) I'm a pretty seasoned Mac user, having had quite a few starting from the early 90's. Currently using 4 on a daily basis.

Well last Thur the sucker froze 4 times in one day after a week of good behavior. I screen grabbed the log from the console (pages & pages of GPU Driver hung for more than 5 sec) and documented all the troubleshooting I'd tried. Made an appointment at the Apple Store. I should note I did get Apple Care, so the machine is still in warranty.

Over the next two days I ran it intensively, opening 16 movie windows, iTunes, even downloaded a GPU stress tester. Not a single crash. That is the story of this bug, it is utterly random, unreproducible, and invincible to all known cures.

The tech at the genius bar was GREAT. He said he was impressed all the things I'd tried, and when he saw the console logs he immediately said they'd replace the graphics cards. He said they'd had a tech note on it, and I mentioned that this machine wasn't from that date range but he just shrugged that off.

Will post again if it seems stable after the graphics card switch. I know it hasn't worked for everyone on here. At least I can rule out the graphics cards.

I guess the moral of the story is that they seem to be aware there are issues now, and even if your machine is not in the date range for the tech note, it's worth contacting them. If you're not under warranty you might have a harder time selling them on a repair, but might as well try.The more of these they see, the more likely they are to prioritize this issue.

Followup: 5 full days of use after both cards replaced and no hiccups. Verdict: hardware issue.

Hi All,

I also got 1 of my D300's replaced with a D700 and problem is solved. So I have 1 D300 and 1 D700 in my MacPro working great again.

I have no idea how Apple engineers determent which card was broken.

As mentioned in my post I have multiple machines with this problem, repairing my second machine is a problem. Apple can't reproduce the problem so can't fix my second MacPro 😟

I have made multiple video's of this machine while having this problem, so I hope sending Apple engineers these video's will help reproducing/fixing the problem.

So it seems to be a hardware problem in the video cards.

I have the same problem, Mac Pro, quad core, D300's - it freezes with the rainbow ball; unplugging and replugging the monitor restores control, but it's very sluggish until I reboot. I've been around and around with AppleCare and the Genius Bars - they want to take the machine and return it in a week, which is unacceptable.

I tried making a new test partition with no added software. I booted into that, let it go into the screensaver, and the same freeze happened after a half hour or so. This shows it's not a 3rd-party software issue. It could involve some interaction with my ASUS VS247 monitor scaled to 1280 x 720, using an Apple Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter, or it could be the D300 graphics cards, their drivers, or some interaction with the OS. I don't care which - I'm tired of getting the runaround and wasting hours of time on this.