Cannot boot to OSX or Win 7 in Bootcamp, Mac Pro, please help

[Robert Wayland]

Hello everybody, I have had an ongoing problem with my Mac Pro for sometime now, and it just got worse. It used to be that every-so-often, it blue screens while in Win 7. This generally occurs while doing something video intensive, like watching YouTube, or if it's been sitting for a while and the screen saver comes on, upon resuming it blue screens. Lately however, its blue screening once I log in to Win 7 and says that there was an error with the display driver. What's really concerning me is that now I cannot even boot into OSX! Once I select the Mac partition, within 5 seconds or so the main Apple display starts flickering white to black at the rate of a strobe light. I do have two monitors, the second being converted from VGA. I have since unplugged the second monitor. The problem is still there, so OSX won't boot, BUT I can boot into Win 7 safe mode with networking no problem. I'm currently in that mode as I type this.

My friend thinks its a hard drive going bad and that I should invest into a 500gig SSD and just copy the data from the old drive over. My other buddy suggested that I check the ram which I did. It tested fine. I'm baffled, I've searched the internet and found nothing, I have searched this forum and found nothing. Some please help me figure this out.

MacPro3,1 Intel Xeon CPU x5482 @ 3.20GHz 3.19 GHz (dual-quadcore)
NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600, 24 inch apple monitor
12.0 GB RAM
64-bit Operating System Win 7 pro sp1
OSX 10.6.8 (I believe so, I cannot boot to find out)

 

[honestone]

Sorry you are having issues. Given that the machine is 7 years old, there is the possibility that the hard drive could be going bad. According to this:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-eight-core-2.8-2008-specs.html

The hard drive spins at 7200 rpm, which is a "decent" speed.

Just copying the data from your problematic drive to a new one (SSD or not) is, most likely, not going to solve your issue. You first need to determine the health of your current drive, and then determine if there are any software issues. Given that you cannot boot into OS 10.6.8, there are two ways you could proceed. If you have the original OS 10.6.x DVD (x is the version number), you could boot your Mac via the DVD, and use Disk Utility on it to try and repair the drive. The other way is if you have a friend that has a Mac. If so, and that person's Mac has a Firewire 800 port, then via a Firewire 800 cable, your machine can be booted into "Target Disk Mode", and via the tools on your friend's machine, the hard drive could be analyzed and possibly repaired. If you use this second method, it would be better if your friend had a more robust disk maintenance program like Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro.

 

[Robert Wayland]

Thank you for the reply and guidance. I will give this a shot today, and reply back. Fingers crossed :/

 

[Robert Wayland]

So I basically tried everything you mentioned. I found the Snow Leopard disk, tried to boot from it, I got a half of a graphic and a frozen screen. Tried that a few times, same result every time. Then out of nowhere, everything worked, which is not that strange. That's the story of my life with this machine. Then it will not work all a sudden. Anyway, since it was working, I was able to get a copy of TechTool Pro and install it with zero issues. I decided to do a full computer scan. Left my house for a little over an hour to let it scan the system, when I came back, the screen had frozen. So as a last resort I booted the computer as an external drive and connected it to me Macbook Pro. I ran the Disk Utility and attempted to repair the hard drives (I have 2x500gig drives, one with OSX, the other with Bootcamp). It wouldn't allow me to check the Bootcamp drive, but the OSX checked out fine. After reconnecting everything and trying both OSX and Win 7 again, all of the same issues are still there. I really don't know what to do, luckily for me I was smart enough to make a mirrored workstation on another computer, but it isn't nearly as strong as this MacPro. What do you think is the next step? Should I set an appointment at the Genius Bar? I'm open to all suggestions. Thanks again.

 

[honestone]

Strange that you could not boot from the DVD. As for TechTool Pro, did you install the eDrive, and then launch it from there? That is what you want to do, as you want to analyze and/or repair your internal drives from an "external" perspective, and even though TechTool Pro can install an eDrive on your internal drive, when you boot to it, it will be run in an "isolated" environment.

Also, you should run some of the other tests first, like Checking the Memory, Fan speed, Sensors Test, Video Memory, and SMART check. In fact, maybe you should run Volume Structures first for each drive. After all that, then try and run the Surface Scan feature.

Additionally, when you ran Disk Utility on your MacBook Pro and it showed the OS X drive was fine (but you could not check the Bootcamp drive), that is also strange. I really wonder if the drive (s) are going bad.

One more thing to try is to remove the 250 gig Bootcamp hard drive and see what happens next.

 

[Robert Wayland]

Hell yes!! Thank you thank you, that all makes sense. I didn't install eDrive from an external perspective. I did run a couple of other tests first. The RAM checked out just fine. I have tested that now with different programs and received the "ok" from both. I can't believe I haven't taken the Bootcamp drive out yet to see what then happens. In hindsight, that seems like such an obvious easy test.

Thank you again Honestone, I will do as instructed and report back soon!

 

[honestone]

Glad I could help. Hopefully, things will check out fine. It will be interesting to see what happens with the Bootcamp hard drive removed.