Mac Pro almost boots but fails at the Finder

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Mac Pro almost boots but fails at the Finder

My relatively old Mac Pro suddenly fails to complete the boot up cycle, you get the Apple Logo OK, some disc drive whirring, then a blue screen for a few seconds, then a grey (white ?) screen with a cursor top left. After a few more seconds, you'd expect the finder to appear but the strangest thing happens - If you move the mouse, the cursor arrow splits into two arrows - one is fixed in the top left corner where it first appeared, the other you can move around the screen with the mouse in the usual way, this second mobile arrow then turns into the revolving beach ball of death indicating something has crashed. Thats as far as the display goes, the Mac then carries on whirring its disc drive almost as though its finishing booting up for a few more minutes, then quietens down. But all you can see on the display is the Beachball.

Now, Ive tried all sorts of boot options, including safe Boot, resetting the NVRAM, disconnecting all peripherals, and the really worrying one - I tried to boot from the emergency CD ROM (OSX10.6) and the same thing happened - gets to the same point in the cycle then grey screen and Beachball. All the remaining options on the forums run out at this point, because they assume you can boot from the CD, like performing a factory reset, checking the disc drive with the disc utility etc.

One thing I have tried is booting from the hardware test CD that came with the Mac, this tells me the hardware is all fine …..???

Would be very grateful for any help on this one……….

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on May 31, 2015 9:03 AM

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Answer 1

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Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

127,105 points

May 31, 2015 9:22 AM in response to Sprintal

? is this a notebook computer or a 42lb silver tower ? what model exactly?

If a silver tower, what graphics card are you running? have you dusted inside your tower lately (Boosted the dust airborne and out of your Mac with compressed air) ??

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Answer 2

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,660 points

May 31, 2015 9:33 AM in response to Sprintal

If the Mac consistently fails when booting from other OS disks it is likely to be a hardware issue.

Do you have any third party hardware installed (extra graphics cards, PCI cards, extra disks, third party RAM etc). You can methodically remove all external devices (except an Apple keyboard & mouse) and try rebooting with the additional items removed.

There is potential for your OS X CD to be failing/ damaged, however it seems unlikely that it would fail in the exact same way as your boot disk. Try another installer disk if you have one or try booting from a bootable backup disk if you can.

Apple hardware test can fail to catch many faults - enable 'loop mode' to repeat the test over a few hours (some faults can be temperate related). Do normal & extended tests in loop mode.

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Answer 3

Sprintal Author

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May 31, 2015 9:34 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Hi Grant,

Its a silver tower, not sure the exact model but from memory it has a Quad core (or two dual core) Intel processors, 1Gb RAM and about 500Gb hard drive.

I did blow the dust out (Quite a lot!) but I wouldn't have thought it would have had time to overheat to cause this problem …. ? It didn't fix the issue.

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Answer 4

Sprintal Author

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May 31, 2015 9:41 AM in response to Drew Reece

Hi Drew,

I would have thought a hardware issue, I did run the extended test on the CD, but no fault found. I'm running it again right now. I don't think its temperature related either as it consistently fails at the same point no matter how long the machine has been on or off. (Ie hot or cold makes no difference)

Its almost like the Finder has been corrupted, but I thought that would be part of the operating system and therefore would boot OK from the CD ?? I don't think the CD drive is faulty, as the hardware disc loads fine, and as you say its unlikely the boot up from the CD would fail at exactly the same point.

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Answer 5

Sprintal Author

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May 31, 2015 9:44 AM in response to Drew Reece

ps. tried removing all peripherals, and as far as I know the Mac has no third party add ons unless the dealer I bought it from fitted them.

I did remove the RAM and swap the boards over so they were in different positions but that made no difference at all.

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Answer 6

Sprintal Author

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May 31, 2015 9:53 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Cant see what the graphics card is until it finishes the hardware test and I can pull it out…. :-(

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Answer 7

The hatter

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60,990 points

May 31, 2015 9:56 AM in response to Sprintal

1Gb RAM and about 500Gb hard drive.

You are trying to "run on fumes"

2nd hand, well run Etrecheck.

Buy 4GB $24 RAM

Add 128GB SSD (and sled adapter)

Never use the system included. Do your own clean install from 10.6.3 DVD

AHT does not find a lot of issues. And never any with GPU. But we would want and need to know exact items. Even 1GB RAM should that be 2x512MB FB-DIMMs ? And only the top Riser. Only use the bottom populed if there are also DIMMs on top Riser.

The last G5 silver tower was dual dual-core "Quad G5" sold in 2006 while Mac Pro 1,1 came out in August that year.

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Answer 8

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

May 31, 2015 9:59 AM in response to Sprintal

AHT CD is not a system, it is a program.

Safe Mode?

Used the CD to repair the drive? ?better yet just wipe and do clean install on a new drive. 500GB drives are "out of vogue" and slow.

And a corrupt directory can prevent boot CD, because it has to look at every drive and see if it has a system and what is there to be mounted, so sometimes you have to slide the drive(s) part way out and then try booting.

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Answer 9

Sprintal Author

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May 31, 2015 10:37 AM in response to The hatter

OK, AHT run shows everything is OK, if you believe it ! (Like you say it doesn't check everything)

Ive pulled the graphics card and it is made by nVidia part number : 08G17010880* Also P345 Rev.1.00

I also tried booting up with the hard drives pulled out (from the CD OSX10.6) and it made no difference. There are two 250Gb hard drives I seem to remember they were set up as a RAID set.

Top bay RAM board has 2 x 512Mb Hynix (?) modules in bays 1 and 2, Bottom bay RAM board has 2 x 512Mb Crucial Technologies in bays 1 and 2

I'm no expert on this stuff - I only know enough to be dangerous, and I haven't got easy access to loads of hardware bits. Not looking for a high performance machine, my wife uses it for mundane stuff …….

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Answer 10

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,660 points

May 31, 2015 11:08 AM in response to Sprintal

Check the door for the RAM instructions just to be sure they are in the correct slots. The manual has more detail for your model, it's worth seeing if the RAM needs to be in specific slots & pairs.

Apple - Support - Manuals

The figures you posted do not give you 1GB of RAM, the system should show 2GB if the figures above are accurate. I'd strip it back to 1 GB & try the CD again. Use matched pairs in the layout the manual suggests. 10.6 requires 1GB minimum, so if you go below that it may not boot Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard - Technical Specifications

If you have a 10.5 disk that may boot since it requires 512MB of RAM, but the Mac Pro may be unable to run that OS depending on the model.

Mac OS X 10.5 - Technical Specifications

Double check the installed RAM figures in AHT.

Don't forget about verbose mode…

Mac OS X: How to start up in single-user or verbose mode - Apple Support

It may list messages that give you a clue to search for when you start up from the internal OS disk.

Single user mode may also allow you to repair the disk via the fsck command that is shown at the prompt. I don't think it is a good idea to run OS X from a RAID set though, especially if they are striped into one large volume (no redundancy, twice the chance of a hardware failure).

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Answer 11

May 31, 2015 11:38 AM in response to Sprintal

A mac pro silver tower that fails as the desktop is being drawn should be evaluated for bad Graphics card, as that is the moment it transitions to the loaded Driver.

You should be able to load diagnostics or the Installer/Utilities DVD, Option-Boot, shift-Boot to invoke Safe mode, and a few other things, and may still fail on regular Booting with a Bad graphics card.

That number brings up NVIDIA Geforce 7300GT, a very old card.

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Answer 12

Sprintal Author

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Jun 1, 2015 1:55 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I think you may have just hit the nail on the head ! It stacks up with everything Ive tried / discovered so Im going to try and get a new graphics card. Should I replace like for like or do you know of an equivalent (more up to date) version I should go for ?

Many thanks !

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