Mac Pro 2009 4,1 power-on issue

Latest on my battery change - realized I should have drained the system of residual power (unplug & hold the power on button) before changing the battery (the system had come on when I plugged it in and it shouldn't have).

Found that reset the PRAM would get me out of blue screen to desktop (just hitting that set of buttons-selected by someone with very long fingers).

Decided yesterday to unplug & then do what I should have done - drain the electricity by holding down the power button for 30 seconds. Put stuff back, system came up - and after shutdown for 20 hours started up okay.

I know with Snow Leopard the hardware test holding down the D key and start the system worked in the past -- but over the years apple changed something and it no longer works -- confusing because the on system notes say it should.

I had those symptoms with a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1. The Apple Store worked on it and found the button battery was well below voltage specs (it was the original battery). That was replaced and I asked that the power supply be replaced too just in case since it was nearing the end of Apple support. Has been working since.

The battery is a BR2032 though a CR2032 should work in a pinch. You can check here for the 2009 shop manual which has instructions for that replacement.

Corpsickle wrote:

I have a 2009 Mac Pro 4,1. I've been having an issue powering up. I press the power button and then nothing. Then a click. This same thing happens repeatedly. When I cut the power (on my surge protector) and power back on, then the machine boots. Consistently, the Mac will not boot unless I cut the power to it and then power on. I've gathered that this may be a switch of some kind or the power supply? Any suggestions appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Find your Everything Mac book and it has instructions on replacing the internal backup battery.

Just did it on my 2008 Mac Pro -- It can be do it yourself if you are comfortable pulling out the video card (in my case yes as I have done it before)

In my case the battery instruction layout did not quite match the book display as I had 2 things blocking the direction it showed -- and the battery was in a well - noticed one side had a gap that I could slip the battery out with my fingernail - -- the holder is a clip not a latch.

It took me some playing around to get it to fire up without issue (did this yesterday) -- but in the end today it started fine after being shut off over night and the spike stick shut off.

Hi i've a 5.1 mac pro 2009 with El Captain.

I've a similar issue on power on...

If I try to power on (after a night of power off) the computer seems to power on, the hard drive strarts, etc... but the computer never start.

If I turn off and turn on ... nothing...

If I hold the power until 15 sec, the light flash, classic sound of boot, and the computer switch on...

For you is a backup battery problem ?!

Can anyone help me !?!

Cheers,

Francesco

Corpsickle wrote:

...Press power button.... nothing.... then, "click". I unplug and plug back in, it powers up! FatMac, maybe it was the power supply?

The Apple Store diagnosis was just the battery but they'd ordered a power supply just in case so I asked that they install it anyway since it might be my last chance with Apple and the labor charge was fixed.

In my case, when the boot problem started, unplugging and immediately replugging didn't work but waiting 30 minutes did as a temporary fix. I was told that with these Mac Pro's the standard SMC reset method had too short an unplugged duration (15 seconds) and 15-30 minutes was required.

The manual I linked to has a variety of power supply tests which you could try.

I've had a power on problem for over a year now with a refurbished 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 here at work. I usually leave it on, but some weekends after it's been powered down or lost power, I have similar power on symptoms as mentioned above. I press the power button and hear a click, but the system doesn't fully power on or spin up the HDDs.

I stumbled upon a solution long ago after upgrading an internal HDD. If I open the case and unplug just one of the internal SATA drives (any one it turns out), the system will power up completely. Once I hear the HDDs start spinning I plug in the HDD that was unplugged and the system works normally until I need to power up again.

possum

Latest on my battery change - realized I should have drained the system of residual power (unplug & hold the power on button) before changing the battery (the system had come on when I plugged it in and it shouldn't have).

Found that reset the PRAM would get me out of blue screen to desktop (just hitting that set of buttons-selected by someone with very long fingers).

Decided yesterday to unplug & then do what I should have done - drain the electricity by holding down the power button for 30 seconds. Put stuff back, system came up - and after shutdown for 20 hours started up okay.

I know with Snow Leopard the hardware test holding down the D key and start the system worked in the past -- but over the years apple changed something and it no longer works -- confusing because the on system notes say it should.

notcloudy wrote:

...Put stuff back, system came up - and after shutdown for 20 hours started up okay...

If you shut down and startup up again right away, does that work too? A long delay after shutdown allowed me to reboot before the repair so if you can start right back up again, it looks like a fresh battery might have been the minimum solution for me too.😉

FatMac>MacPro wrote:

notcloudy wrote:

...Put stuff back, system came up - and after shutdown for 20 hours started up okay...

If you shut down and startup up again right away, does that work too? A long delay after shutdown allowed me to reboot before the repair so if you can start right back up again, it looks like a fresh battery might have been the minimum solution for me too.😉

I don't know if the battery needs to be conditioned after install - but cross fingers and touch wood - if I am not using the mac so its powered off - turning the spike stick power on for awhile before I use it -- seems to help -- (do have to unplug the power to my backup drive)

I think my problems with the battery replacement had to do with less than great instructions as it should have included draining the residual power before opening up the box, and restarting after resetting the clock and date.

Sigh - today had problems on startup - finally got it going by holding down the option key to select the startup disk.

I repaired disk permissions on the hard drive - and made sure in system preferences the startup drive is the hard drive.

hate it when it works for a few days and then has problems again.

I don't know if the battery needs to be conditioned after install

the 3Volt Lithium coin cell batteries are non-recharging. There is no conditioning involved.

notcloudy wrote:

Sigh - today had problems on startup - finally got it going by holding down the option key to select the startup disk.

I repaired disk permissions on the hard drive - and made sure in system preferences the startup drive is the hard drive.

hate it when it works for a few days and then has problems again.

Well this morning started up okay-- but I did unplug my modem in case it was defaulting to a network drive if the modem was plugged in.

Ran the Etrecheck report yesterday & it showed no hardware errors. I did get an error system launch agents - but as I do not startup any applications on startup -- guessing that is a consolidated version of an error message noting there are non.

Well back to problem this evening -- reran permissions and verified disk

I did work in IPHOTO CS3 before earlier shutdown -- and that seems to be common component of the issue --- on this start (had to reset pram again to get past blue screen). CS3 has an efficiency option - and I reduced the amount of ram that can be used (will take place on next use) as it seemed to be higher than it was last (actually first) time I looked at the setting.

Don't know why changing the battery would cause an issue with photoshop.

This is very curious - it works and then it doesn't and then its fine again -- one thing noticed console does not close properly (crashes) after I review console/system logs.

Today on the 3rd shutdown and restart - it started okay after I started with the command key held down - don't know if it did anything but it worked - when I clicked on the spotlight right after the startup - it said it was indexing.