Q: Mac Pro 3,1 won't turn on :-(
Problem:
My 2008 Mac Pro won't start up. Earlier today it was running several apps but nothing CPU or memory intensive when the front fan started spinning very loudly and the monitor went dark. I held down the power button to shut it off, then I couldn't get it to turn back on. When I press the power button now, there is a red LED on the logic board that comes on steady for a few seconds along with the 4 LED lights on both memory cards. After 2-3 seconds, the Mac shuts down without making any fan or hard drive noise. I should mention that about a month ago, I had a similar problem so I took the Mac Pro apart to blow the dust out of it (I removed everything but the Logic board). Blowing the dust out seemed to do the trick, until now.
Solutions I Have Tried:
- Removing all drives except the system drive
- Replacing the CR2032 battery on the logic board
- Reseating the RAM in the DIMM slots
- Switching the memory cards
- Resetting the SMC
- I couldn't reset the PRAM as it seems the Mac doesn't get far enough along in the startup process for this to work.
- Pressing the DIAG_LED button on the logic board(before I pressed it, no LEDs were lit; when I pressed it, the STBY LED lit up yellow)
System Specs:
Mac Pro 3,1 Early 2008
Quad Core Intel Xeon 3.0Ghz
16 GB RAM, 4x 1TB HDD,
120GB SSD boot disk mounted via PCIe slot
OS: Mavericks or El Capitan (unsure of the OS or version number, as Mac won't boot up)
Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2), null
Posted on Apr 25, 2016 10:57 PM
