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Level 1

1 points

Mac Pro 2009 (4.1) won't boot - strange DIAG leds behaviour

Hi!

Thanks for reading my post. I have a problem with my mac pro early 2009 (4.1) and I really need your help!

The symptoms:

The MP won't boot. When I press the power button, it turns on, fans are running (not the psu fan though), I can hear some activity in the HD and optical drive but no chime and no video (screen stays black). Keyboard not responding, can't even open the optical drive.

The led on the power button starts blinking.

What I tried:

Tried to remove gpu, HDs, optical drive, all rams. Tried reseating rams, shuffling rams, new ram,...

Tried another gpu, resetting smc,...

No changes.

Diag leds:

When I press the DIAG LED button on the backplane, I have the amber 5v led on.

When I press the power button, there is a very brief red light on the cpu board (I think that's normal), that's all. No other light after that, neither for cpus nor rams, the led over the power button goes white.

On the back plane leds, there is a green led over the amber 5v that stays solid green.

Close to the diag button,

EFI led goes green, then GPU led goes green, then gpu led starts blinking (green), at the same time the top led (sys pg ?) goes solid green, after the gpu led has had a few blinks, it turn off together with the EFI led and the led on the power button starts blinking.

To make it easier to understand, I made a video:

https://youtu.be/ZmOMGe7E5is

Any idea will be much appreciated!

Many thanks!!

VIN,Mac Pro (Early 2009), OS X El Capitan (10.11), null

Posted on Jan 27, 2016 3:36 AM

Best reply

Digital64

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Apr 19, 2017 12:15 PM

Hello Again

Update 19042017

My Mac Pro 2x Quad core is back again !! Did a disassembly and went carefully throughout the troubleshooting step by step. Final step re seated and thermal paste with silver artic4 to both cpu also swaped them. Finally boot normal again to Mac Os Sierra new thermal paste lowered temp to more than 6 points on eacth cpus ! But after a 10 min work, a freeze again and automatic restart that never got back again. Flashing led under EFI. Decided to give a second try with the old Cpus that original came with my MacPro, result evrything is perfect and back again (no EFI corruption theory !!) Conclusion: I suppose a breakdown of one or both cpus which I bought second handed (cpu Xeon X5660) The Original Xenon e5520 my memory to 1066Mhz and working fine again I hope this helps someone out there .

By the way the troubleshooting info on the led behavior is kind of odd and not many out there it would be very helpful to know exactly the senescence in with each led comes off and on.

Many thanks to all,no matter how old or new you gadget is keep posting you experiences, they might help others this articles helped Me!

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19 replies

domflowers Author

Level 1

1 points

Mar 3, 2016 5:11 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Hello !

I bought a new cell coin battery, but, unfortunately, it doesn't help...

I agree that it is very strange that neither the psu fan nor the back cpu-cage fan doesn't run. What could cause that?

I'm running out of ideas... 😟

The thing is, before annoying everyone on the net with my problem, I tried the Apple store. They wouldn't look at it because it is apparently "vintage".

I went to what is supposed to be the best independent Apple repair store in my area and they diagnosed a dead graphic card (which is not cause I tried with two other working gpu's) - I guess that nowadays those kind of shops make all of their business repairing broken iPhone screens...

So, I'm kind of stuck...

Does someone has any other idea?

Or does someone knows a really good technician in Brussels (Belgium)? (or at least someone who owns a 2009MP to test the parts?)

Thanks

notcloudy

Level 4

1,252 points

Mar 3, 2016 1:26 PM in response to domflowers

domflowers wrote:

Hello !

I bought a new cell coin battery, but, unfortunately, it doesn't help...

I agree that it is very strange that neither the psu fan nor the back cpu-cage fan doesn't run. What could cause that?

I'm running out of ideas... 😟

The thing is, before annoying everyone on the net with my problem, I tried the Apple store. They wouldn't look at it because it is apparently "vintage".

I went to what is supposed to be the best independent Apple repair store in my area and they diagnosed a dead graphic card (which is not cause I tried with two other working gpu's) - I guess that nowadays those kind of shops make all of their business repairing broken iPhone screens...

So, I'm kind of stuck...

Does someone has any other idea?

Or does someone knows a really good technician in Brussels (Belgium)? (or at least someone who owns a 2009MP to test the parts?)

Thanks

I have been having startup issues with my "vintage" 2008 late model Mac Pro -- where it sat on grey screen, blue screen etc. Changed the battery, purchased new mouse, disconnected Time Machine - ending automatic backups, removed Wacom pad and software in case of short - reset pram many time - put my personal folders in the private area of spotlight - and the cache folders --

What I think caused the problem - Housekeeping cleanup - deleting multiple small PDF's or edit/save -- moving items to different folders - adding frame with text to my photos outside of IPHOTO -- in other words very busy when the problem suddenly reared its ugly head.

At this point - yesterday evening and today now - normal start up worked find -- the one additional change:

Yesterday AM - the system was slow on startup - grey screen lasted longer than normal and so did blue screen -- I went and had a cup of coffee -- and read a manual during the time the startup took to bring up the desk top. The finder had an issue -- not wanting to open the GO menu - just very slow - not stuck -- so I restarted -- restart find and it works again.

I think because I had that high activity some Apple Unix cleanup or disk compression is doing house keeping -- that could include the Spotlight finder indexing - because I had cleaned up so much.

THe problem may be that the programmers who designed whatever the problem is never considered very high activity and so did not allow for a cap on threads running from one job at the same time. I did have finder memory leaks and that is where The GPU message may have been generated - also had finder freeze - was able to force quit using keyboard option/command/escape -- but you can't launch it - and the top menu bar disappeared (work around - opened preview - top menu bar showed up so I could restart & everything was fine again.

grzeku

Level 1

4 points

Nov 15, 2016 5:24 AM in response to domflowers

Hey,

I think i have the same problem. Have you found solution?

notcloudy

Level 4

1,252 points

Nov 17, 2016 7:29 AM in response to grzeku

grzeku wrote:

Hey,

I think i have the same problem. Have you found solution?

It may have something to do with the com.apple.aslmanager throtling - at least that is the message I received after my system suddenly shutdown when I opened the console.

Since my last post - I also just let the system run after a slow startup - when the desktop shows up I opened the activity monitor & watched the drive activy -- the screen was extremely sluggish for a few hours -- but the activity was not frozen - its frustrating because certain days have no problem others have them.

Mac Pro 2009 (4.1) won't boot - strange DIAG leds behaviour