Mac Pro 5.1 no apple logo or grey screen during start up

Hi Andy,
I have a different problem. I have been using a Quadro K5000 Mac for two years without a hitch. As of recently the Mac no longer finishes its boot cycle. It appears to be the Quadro card that prevents fully booting... I have tried all the solutions but nonen work. It DOES work when using the NVIDIA web driver but that one keeps the fans of the card spinning all the time. I have never used the web driver because of it and using the standrard (ancient) mac driver was just fine until two weeks ago. Then my Mac no longer booted. I have taken out the (very expensive) Quadro and replaced it with my older ATI card which at least allows me to work but it's far from ideal and even far less acceptable for such an expensive card.

Any suggestions?

Albert

Could this be a graphics card issue? Just to reiterate, the computers display works fine once its booted up, It just doesn't kick in until the computer is fully booted up.

that phenomenon is called " no boot screens". You get that when you are not using a Genuine Mac graphics card.

You likely have a non-Apple Flashed PC card installed.

You can confirm by booting with the Option key depressed. If the screen remains blank you have a PC card.

Many PC cards work but they do not show a boot screen and thus can't be used for special startups that require reading the screen before the drivers load.

Try resetting the NVRAM to see if that helps with shutdown and bootup times.

How to Reset NVRAM on your Mac

After the next bootup open the Console app in Finder>Applications>Utilities and look for log entries during the shutdown process. Post suspicious ones here.

Look before the log entry that starts with BOOT_TIME since that is the first line of a bootup

If the graphics card is showing up as 9500GT, it isn't flashed.

That card turns into a GT120 when flashed.

Get the card flashed or get one that already is.

HI MacMike84,

ive got got a 2x2.4GHz Mac Pro mid 2010, and I've been doing a lot of messing about with NVIDIA cards of late.

So, as the others have said, the reason you are not getting the boot screen is because the GFx card you have in place is not an Apple card, but a PC Card. The original card for this machine should have been an apple ATI HD5770 or 5780.

Horrible card. Hate it,

Means that as the card does not have an EFI Bios on it, your Mac simply does not know what to do with it until the OS has actually loaded.

the apple version of this card is the GT120 with Apple part number A1310. Search eBay for them as you can pick them up for a few $/€/£

Other thing you may find is that the card performs poorly, as the OSX drivers may not properly identify it and so force the PCIe slot into X1 speed.

NVIDIA have come to the help here by releasing drivers for the Quadro series of cards, and helpfully use a unified driver, so works with all nvidia cards.

GO to www.nvidia.com and look for the download drivers section. Select Quadro as the chipset, and look for the k5000 for Mac. Make sure you set the exact version of your OS X as the driver is specific to your OSX install.

once installed you should find a bit of a performance improvement.

ALso means you can use more modern NVIDIA cards such as the Maxwell cards, but you will need a power connector cable or machine should have come with one but you may need to ebay for another. Normally these are cheap.

i have a GT120 and a GTX750Ti in mine at the moment, and I'm planning to upgrade to a GTX970/980

good luck, and if you need any more help, reply back or message me if it allows

Andy