Mac Pro dark screen and cursor at startup

xeffer wrote:

The displays are powered up and on when I restart. The only constant is with more than one monitor plugged in to a thunderbolt port, startup stalls (Black or dark grey screen with cursor in left hand corner, cursor can be moved with mouse). Unplugging the monitors from the computer does not let the computer finish it's start up. I have to shut down the Mac, unplug the two monitors and then I can restart fine. Everything worked fine with this configuration with Yosemite and Mavericks.

Are you running TIME MACHINE?

I am interested in your issue and any startup issues as my late 2008 mac pro started having issues in early November. I now think it has something to do with my time machine drive - as the problems started when the 1TB drive was close to or after 500GB full. I have taken to powering up by selecting the drive - and it seems to work -- when I have error messages it seems to point to a Finder leak - so am thinking it has something to do with spotlight indexing the Time Machine drive (currently just stopped time machine and dismounted the drive - and unplugged its power source.

Time machine indexing of your backups is required for Time Machine to work correctly.

It is possible the index of your backups is damaged. It can be re-created by discarding the index. This procedure from Pondini.org:

IF YOUR BACKUPS ARE LOCAL (on an internal or directly-connected external HD:

Open the Time Machine drive/partition via the Finder. At the top level you'll find a folder named .Spotlight-V100. Delete it (you'll have to enter your Admin password), and empty the trash (which may take quite a while). Do not touch anything else.

Run a backup. The first one will take quite a while, as the index must be recreated and the backups indexed, but thereafter backups should run normally.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

Time machine indexing of your backups is required for Time Machine to work correctly.

It is possible the index of your backups is damaged. It can be re-created by discarding the index. This procedure from Pondini.org:

IF YOUR BACKUPS ARE LOCAL (on an internal or directly-connected external HD:

Open the Time Machine drive/partition via the Finder. At the top level you'll find a folder named .Spotlight-V100. Delete it (you'll have to enter your Admin password), and empty the trash (which may take quite a while). Do not touch anything else.

Run a backup. The first one will take quite a while, as the index must be recreated and the backups indexed, but thereafter backups should run normally.

my issue with the indexing working correctly - may be because I was/am doing a very through move/and cleanup of information. My backup drive is 1TB and has 500MB of data going back to 2012 -- The biggest growth is when I started this latest project last year - putting information directly in a frame around pictures outside of IPHOTO -- peoples names and where it is (Photoshop). So it has occurred to me that time machine simply cant handle that length of time and its many changes - along with the indexing.

To the best of my knowledge, there have been NO reports that "Time Machine cannot handle ..." anything.

I think you need to keep looking for your solution.

I for one, have had difficulty with Time Machine's Indexes getting corrupted over a long time, and have found relief in rebuilding those Indexes, or in "Starting over" with an Additional blank drive and having Time Machine alternate automatically between the two drives.

xeffer wrote:

Time machine has nothing to do with the problems I'm experiencing. My machine won't start up unless I unplug my other two monitors.

As I mentioned above - interested in this issue because my Mac Pro has been off-and on giving me grief on startup - including having the single monitor freeze - My Time Machine, Monitor, and a modem are on the USB ports in the back of my Mac -- -- (the TIme Machine is now disconnected) the only errors I found that made since - that Finder had a memory leak - -- never any problems when Time Machine is disconnected.

Apparently the finder leaks were referring to the Time Machine drive indexing rather than the system drive -- so my question about Time Machine - was to see if you used it connected all the time (external drive) because it could be knocking out the startup of your other monitors.

http://www.tekrevue.com/tip/mac-pro-thunderbolt-performance/

Have you tried selecting the drive on power up (hold the Option key down after the chime).

Have a book by Bob LeVitus(dr mac) from 2002 first OS X mentioning problems with OS X losing some of the startup preferences.

There are also a number of threads on this web site mentioning having to select the drive to power.

At the moment will keep selecting my single drive at startup - have reset the PRAM - changed the clock battery - stopped time machine - deleted the system preferences cache so it could reset -- and still issues unless I select the drive.

xeffer wrote:

I tried the option start > setup drive. Problem persists

I only have one drive - so don't know what you mean by setup drive -- I am at snow leopard and big aluminum Mac pro - after the chime &hold down option key - it comes up pointing to my one and only drive and system loads fast.

Have you put in a support request for a call from an apple tech - at this point looks like it may be a problem with el-capitan software itself - and even though your hardware is may be off warrantee - software problems need to be taken care of.

xeffer wrote:

I've spent too many hours trying to solve the problem, I've been to every website, chat, and discussion room that is discussing this problem, been to the Genius Bar three times. I know it's a problem with El Capitan because my configuration is exactly the same as the day before I upgraded to El Capitan and everything was good with the three monitors since late 2013. This is frustrating since most Mac problems are easy to resolve.

Best place for your problem resolve is with Apple Support - setup for a call -reference this thread here so the technical person who will work with you can do some research before contacting you.

I have had a similar issue after upgrading to 10.11.3. My fix was to click around the center of my screen to select my user even though the screen was black and showed solely my cursor. I typed my password and hit enter. Once you finally boot into the OS, enable Automatic Login and choose your user. Problem temporarily solved until Apple addresses the issue.