2008 Mac pro freezing and graphics glitch

[Fiestamaiden]

Hello all,

I've been looking through the internet on this issue for months, and I'm here, so forgive me if this has already been talked about on here. I have an early 2008 Mac, running snow leopard. My computer is used for audio recording only, and I very rarely get online with it. Around Thanksgiving of 2019, I started getting issues where I would wake my computer up from sleep, and after about 5 minutes, all of the solid colors of Logic Pro 9 would go checkered. After a restart, I could get it to work fine after that.

Since then, it has progressively gotten worse. It used to only freeze anand pixelate in Logic, but then it started doing it at the desktop. After restart, It would start to get hung up at the Apple logo, and then it would get pixelated on the apple logo and freeze. Generally, I can mess with it for a while, and it will eventually work. Last month, it would take me about an hour of tinkering to get it running. Today, it took me almost 3 hours, and I got it going. I really don't want to replace this thing.

As of now, I replaced my main hard drive with an SSD. Everything Boots up faster, which makes restarting all the time a lot faster, but it eventually started freezing again. I had cloned the original HD to my SSD, so I was afraid maybe a file was corrupt. I reinstalled Snow Leopard from the internet on the SSD, and it still happens. I just replaced my 16 GB with my original RAM I had, and it is still happening. My next thought is graphics card. I have one on order now, and will be trying that in about a week.

Are there any ideas of what else this could be? I'm not super comfortable with replacing the graphics card, as I am not the most tech savvy person, but this Mac is really teaching me a lot. I'm willing to do just about anything.

Other notes: I bought this Mac in 2016 refurbished, and it has worked fine up until Nov of 19. I did have lightening hit my house in June of 2019, where it burnt up the inside of my surge protector that the Mac was plugged into. But from June to Novemeber, everything worked fine. So I don't know if that player any part in anything. I will attempt to upload a video or today and some other pictures of screens I got before.

I couldn't upload the video, so here is a link of what happened today.

thank you all,in advance!

 

[Fiestamaiden]

Also, when it will get to the Apple screen, I am able to boot it up fine in Safe Mode. I've never gotten the graphics to glitch in safe mode. Does this mean it wouldn't be the graphics card?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

Honestly, that does look like a failing graphics card. It may not do it in Safe Mode, as the driver hasn't loaded, which gives the OS more low-level capability.

-Mac Pro (Early 2008), correct?
-Still running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard?
-Which graphics card - ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT, or NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600?

C

 

[Fiestamaiden]

Yes, early 2008. 10.6.8 snow leopard and it's ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT. The new card I ordered is also an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT. It's weird how temperamental it is. Once I can get it to a certain point, everything seems to run smoothly. But the second I see the checkers, I know I'm done for.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[Cory Cooper]

OK, thanks.

Sounds like it may have been failing, and those patterns would display after graphics cards heated up.

Here's a link for the steps to replace it with the one you ordered: Mac Pro Graphic Card for Mac Pro (Early 2008) Replacement

Let us know how it goes.

C

 

[Fiestamaiden]

OK, thanks.

Sounds like it may have been failing, and those patterns would display after graphics cards heated up.

Here's a link for the steps to replace it with the one you ordered: Mac Pro Graphic Card for Mac Pro (Early 2008) Replacement

Let us know how it goes.

C

I got a used graphics card from a company on Ebay. My computer would not recognize it or show any display. I'm not sure if it's the graphics card or not, at this point. I put the old one in, and it took forever for it to give me a display or even boot up. But after that, it started blinking like my RAM was bad. After hours of tinkering, I got it to boot up with one stick of RAM in. In an act of pure frustration, i looked on marketplace and found a 2009 for sale. I went ahead and got it and moved all of my info to it. I'll probably still try to get this one running, on the side, but at least I can do it less desperately now. It seems like it has multiple issues.