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Mac Pro Restart Loop

I have a Mac Pro (Early 2008) running 10.10.4 with a couple of issues (possibly related) I'm hoping someone can help me sort out.


The computer has been for the past week or so been entering in to a endless restart loop. The computer will randomly power down and start up again, getting so far as to about halfway loading on the Apple splash screen, before shutting down and restarting again. This goes on endlessly until you hold down the power button, forcing a shutdown, and giving it a few minutes before starting it up again. In addition to that, the computer takes an extremely long time to reboot or shutdown via menu option (~10 minutes), just showing a black screen with spinning disk, often times forcing me to hold down the power button to force a shutdown. In addition (perhaps unrelated) the computer becomes extremely laggy when left on for extended periods of time (couple days). It seems the longer the computer is left in a sleep state, the more laggy it is, with it becoming so unresponsive, it can take up to a minute to open a Safari. A simple restart fixes the issue, and it reoccurs if the computer is left on sleep for another few days.


Any idea on what could be the issue, or where I can look to get an idea of what might be causing it (logs, etc)? I've repaired all permissions and tried making sure all software and peripherals were up to date, but it hasn't seem to make much of a difference. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Mac Pro (Early 2008), OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)

Posted on Jul 7, 2015 5:53 PM

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6 replies

Jul 7, 2015 5:56 PM in response to camhabib

Try these in order testing your system after each to see if it's back to normal:


1. a. Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM

b. Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)


2. Restart the computer in Safe Mode, then restart again, normally. If this doesn't help, then:


Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the

COMMAND and R keys until the Utilities menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the

computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager

screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.


3. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.


When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.


4. Reinstall the 10.10.4 update: OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 Combo Update.


5. Reinstall OS X: Reboot from the Recovery HD. Select Reinstall OS X from the Utilities menu, and click on the Continue button.


Reinstall the 10.10.4 update: OS X Yosemite 10.10.4 Combo Update, if required.


Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Jul 7, 2015 8:39 PM in response to camhabib

When you experience any of that behavior, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.

Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.

Copy the messages to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of it useless for solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

Jul 8, 2015 1:44 AM in response to Kappy

Kappy you included this statement

. Alternatively, restart the

computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager

screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

Are you sure this works with 10.10.4?

With 10.10.0 the Recovery partition no longer shows with Option boot unless you took action via Terminal to reallow that. See:

Yosemite recovery partition - gone?

Jul 8, 2015 5:47 PM in response to lllaass

Okay so the PRAM and SMC were both reset, all permissions repaired, didn't reinstall anything, but I've had it happen once or twice to me again. Bellow are the console messages immediately preceding the shutdown. Two quick notes of interest - 1) I use my desktop almost exclusively for photo editing (Adobe Lightroom), and as such, it's been running every time the shutdowns occurred, this may not be a coincidence or not, 2) when the reboot loops happens, sometimes it doesn't make it to the boot screen, you simply hear the CD drives and fan continuously power on and off, without anything coming up on the screen, software may be loading and just crashing before it has a chance to load video drivers, I'm not really sure. I can post more messages either before or after the boot if that helps.


7/8/15 8:23:19.370 PM mds[57]: (Volume.Normal:2464) volume:0x7fd80c875000 ********** Bootstrapped Creating a default store:0 SpotLoc:(null) SpotVerLoc:(null) occlude:0 /Volumes/firmwaresyncd.Xaslsf

7/8/15 8:23:24.000 PM kernel[0]: process xrdd[82] caught causing excessive wakeups. Observed wakeups rate (per sec): 183; Maximum permitted wakeups rate (per sec): 150; Observation period: 300 seconds; Task lifetime number of wakeups: 45190

7/8/15 8:23:24.206 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[528]) Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.ReportCrash.DirectoryService

7/8/15 8:23:43.000 PM kernel[0]: process Adobe Desktop Se[454] caught causing excessive wakeups. Observed wakeups rate (per sec): 192; Maximum permitted wakeups rate (per sec): 150; Observation period: 300 seconds; Task lifetime number of wakeups: 45279

7/8/15 8:23:43.234 PM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.apple.ReportCrash[529]) Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.ReportCrash

7/8/15 8:23:43.237 PM ReportCrash[529]: Invoking spindump for pid=454 wakeups_rate=192 duration=235 because of excessive wakeups

7/8/15 8:24:01.340 PM spindump[512]: No microstackshots found

7/8/15 8:24:39.798 PM Little Snitch Software Update[531]: Software Update: Skipping pre-release version 3.6 nightly (4348) (4348).

7/8/15 8:29:03.000 PM bootlog[0]: BOOT_TIME 1436401743 0

Jul 8, 2015 7:55 PM in response to camhabib

Remove "Little Snitch" and see whether there's an improvement.

Any third-party software that doesn't install from the App Store or by drag-and-drop into the Applications folder, and uninstall by drag-and-drop to the Trash, is a system modification.

Whenever you remove system modifications, they must be removed completely, and the only way to do that is to use the uninstallation tool, if any, provided by the developers, or to follow their instructions. If the software has been incompletely removed, you may have to re-download or even reinstall it in order to finish the job.

I never install system modifications myself, and except as stated in this comment, I don't know how to uninstall them. You'll have to do your own research to find that information.

Here are some general guidelines to get you started. Suppose you want to remove something called “BrickMyMac” (a hypothetical example.) First, consult the product's Help menu, if there is one, for instructions. Finding none there, look on the developer's website, say www.brickmymac.com. (That may not be the actual name of the site; if necessary, search the Web for the product name.) If you don’t find anything on the website or in your search, contact the developer. While you're waiting for a response, download BrickMyMac.dmg and open it. There may be an application in there such as “Uninstall BrickMyMac.” If not, open “BrickMyMac.pkg” and look for an Uninstall button. The uninstaller might also be accessed by clicking the Customize button, if there is one.

Back up all data before making any changes.

You will generally have to restart the computer in order to complete an uninstallation. Until you do that, there may be no effect, or unpredictable effects.

If you can’t remove software in any other way, you’ll have to erase and install OS X. Never install any third-party software unless you're sure you know how to uninstall it; otherwise you may create problems that are very hard to solve.

Trying to remove complex system modifications by hunting for files by name often will not work and may make the problem worse. The same goes for "utilities" such as "AppCleaner" and the like that purport to remove software.

Mac Pro Restart Loop

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