Mac Pro 2009 El Capitan crashes.

[Willy]

Hey,

i hope someone can give me some advice. I have 2009 model Mac Pro 2,66Ghz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor, 16Bg 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC memory and ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024 MB graphics card.

This machine is purely for making music. I used to use Lion and everything worked fine. Now i bought Samsung 850 EVO ssd-drive and installed El Capitan. At first it seemed to work fine and very smoothly and fast but suddenly it started just freeze and start booting itself.

I´ve done all the first aid i have found with and without any external devices connected to the computer, disk repair, safe boot, check file system, reset PRAM, reset SMC and tried to put the disk in different bays. I have Icy Dock adapter for the disk, i also tried to install the hard drive withouth the adapter into optical bay but still the same.

Can you tell me if it seems that the hard disk is bad or could it be something else? I really don´t know and not that good with computers. Strange is that sometime it works ok for awhile and boots normally very fast and then after half an hour it freezes and boots itself and then i might try to boot many times and it gives me white screen or it stars loading osx but it freezes half way through and sometimes there is some text during the loading screen. I put a picture here, the text is not the same everytime.

One time the text was like this: Unsupport tedpanic (cpu 2 caller" "TLB invalidation IPI timeout" "CPU(s) failed to respond to interrups", "unresponsive CPU bitmap". And other time it´s like in the picture.

And the thing is that if i start Lion from the old disk which is still inside the computer, it works great.

Thanks for any help!

 

[honestone]

A couple of things:

1. Have you ever done any disk cleanup/maintenance/repairs from a software perspective? You can actually do quite a lot of disk cleanup on your own, and there are some excellent products available (both free and commercial) that can help you with those tasks. Two of the best (that I use) are Onyx and Tech Tool Pro.

2. How did you get the Samsung 850 EVO SSD "ready"? That is, how did you install El Capitan on it, and also all your apps? Did you do a clean, fresh, "virgin" installation of El Capitan? And what about your applications?

3. Did you insure that all your third party apps are compatible with El Capitan? If they are not, were updates for El Capitan compatibility available, and did you download and install them?

4. Are you making backups to an external device? That is so, so critical!

 

[Willy]

Thanks for the reply. I only did disk repair with disk utility and it sayes the disk is fine. I bought the disk brand new and first when i installed the disk and opened my computer it said that "can´t identify the disk" or something like that. I used the disk utility erased and formatted OSX journaled and then the disk showed up normally. Then downloada El Capitan from appstore (It´s still available there for users who can´t upgrade to High Sierra from older machines) and did clean install. Installed all my software to El Capitan so everything was made "virgin". All my third parties are compatible. I downloaded latest drivers, everything should be ok but it´s not.

About back up, i have my old system in the old hard drive and i have cloned that to external hard drive. This new system i don´t have a back up but it´s not crucial at this point. I tried to install the El Capitan again and it erased all my software so i have to install all my software again. But i don´t wanna make clone from broken system, i want to install everything clean and make sure the system works, then run a back to external disk.

I went to store today and got a replacement for the hard drive. Tomorrow we´ll see if it was the hard failure or is it something else. Can it be the EVO 850 is not compatible with this machine?

 

[honestone]

When you used Disk Utility, did you do those repairs in an "isolated" manner, ie, having started Disk Utility from either a "cloned" backup (like SuperDuper!), or from the (hidden) Recovery HD partition?

When you did the installation of all your apps, did you do clean, fresh, "virgin" installations, just like you did for El Capitan?

I'd be "somewhat surprised" if the Samsung 850 EVO SSD is not compatible with your Max Pro, although that machine is almost 9 years old. I have two Samsung 850 Pro 512 gig SSDs installed in two nice, slim Orico external enclosures, and they work fine, and in particular, with my SuperDuper! backups (which are bootable clones) for each of my Macs to two separate partitions on each (I have a late 2012 Mac Mini (and in fact it has a Samsung 840 Pro 256 gig SSD inside of it), and a mid 2013 13" MacBook Air).

However, via a Google search of "Can a Samsung 850 EVO SSD be installed inside a 2009 Mac Pro?", one of the "hits" was this:

https://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/product_info.php?products_id=859

Note that the only Mac desktop included on that link is a Mac Mini. So, I am at a loss.

 

[Willy]

Thanks for the reply. Yes i did clean install on every software. That link is very interesting indeed, no mac pro there. But some forums people were using EVO disks in 2009 models or even older and they worked fine. Also i didn´t find official note that they DON`T work with mac pros. As this disk was very used in general and acclaimed, i decided to go with it. But you are right, it´s old machine so you never know.

 

[honestone]

Well, let's hope the new replacement 850 EVO SSD works.

Just out of curiosity, did you run your machine with just the OS on it? You can use Safari there for internet "stuff", as a "decent" test.

 

[Willy]

Hey sorry i didn't understand your recent question? What do you mean? Do you mean did i run the machine without any third party software installed? I did first for awhile and it did freeze once during that time.

 

[Willy]

I installed the new disk and El Capitan. Still the same. Sometimes it stars, sometimes just get stucked on the loading screen, freezed one time and booted itself. I don´t know what to do....Don´t have anything connected to the computer. Just El Capitan, mouse, keyboard and screen.

 

[honestone]

Hey sorry i didn't understand your recent question? What do you mean? Do you mean did i run the machine without any third party software installed? I did first for awhile and it did freeze once during that time.

Yes, that is what I meant. It's beginning to sound more and more like that Samsung 850 EVO SSD is having issues with your machine (or vice versa).

 

[Willy]

So update. I can´t get any ssd work in my computer. I returned Samsung and ordered OWC Mercury Electra 3G disk which should be 100% compatible with this machine and it did the same thing.

I did memtest, i did apple hardware test, i tested my memory by taking them out and ran the computer with only two memory sticks and switched them to other two. I put my laptop (which has Kingston SSD and Yosemite installed) on target disk mode and booted the Mac Pro from there and guess what: it did the same thing also when booting from laptop via firewire 800 cable.

So my computer don´t like ssd´s for sure. But HDD is fine. My guess is there is something wrong with the CPU, some chip is broken on motherboard but how come it only affects the ssd...Strane. So i´m completely helpless. Don´t know what to do.

 

[honestone]

Man, you went through a lot! Given that you have an "older", it is possible that the current generation of SSDs cannot be used inside them. As it is, the "speed" of the HDD interface is 3 GB/sec. The Samsung SSD you tried to install is designed to be used with machines that have a 6 GB/Sec "bus speed".

From your description, this should be your Mac Pro:

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/...-quad-core-2.66-early-2009-nehalem-specs.html

If you scroll down to the Standard Storage section, that's where the 3 GB/sec is mentioned. At the "bottom" of that area, there is a link for "SSD Compatibility Guide for all G3 & Later Macs". But when I clicked that, I could not see anything definitive for your Mac and SSD compatibility. However, in doing more "digging", I did find this site:

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/faq/mac-pro-how-to-replace-hard-drive-install-ssd.html

Not sure if that will do it for you, but at least it might be a start.

Also, here are the results of a google search for "3 GB/Sec SSDs":

ps://www.google.com/search?q=3+GB%2FSec+SSDs&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS628US629&oq=3+GB%2FSec+SSDs&aqs=chrome..69i57.5918j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Some of the sites on that link look helpful.

 

[Willy]

Hey thanks for the info. However according to this site https://eshop.macsales.com/upgrades...lter.myowcgroup=Internal Drive Options&page=1 this OWC Mercury Electra 3G disk i ordered from OWC should be compatible with my computer. I even talked to OWC people through their chat and they couldn´t give me an answer why it doesn´t work. I read that 6Gb disks are backwards compatible but anyway i ordered the 3G Mercury Electra drive just to be sure. But that doesn´t work either.

I´ve been thinkin if it´s the Icy Dock adapter that is causein the trouble but then again i have tried the disk into optical bay also with no luck. And like i said i tried to boot from my laptops ssd through firewire 800 cable and it was still the same. So it can´t be the adapter or sata connectors, it has to be something to do with ssd disks itself as it don´t work even if it´s external. And also i´ve talked to music people through forums and many have said they have been using Samsung EVO 850 drives in 2009 and 2010 Mac Pros´s with no issues at all. And even some hackintosh sites recommend using the Samsung EVO drives for building hackintosh.

So i´m really lost here.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

We still may be able to narrow down the cause of the kernel panic. Since you have tried multiple SSDs, they aren't the problem, and something else is causing the issues. As a correction, the SATA 6Gb/s SSDs are backwards-compatible with your Mac Pro, although they will run at the Mac Pro's SATA 3Gb/s speed. I currently run a Samsung 850 EVO SATA 6Gb/s in Late 2009 iMac, which has a SATA 3Gb/s bus, without any issues at all. Also, I have a Samsung 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s in a MacBook Pro (17-inch Mid/Late 2007, 2.4GHz), which has a SATA 1.5Gb/s bus, also without issue.

The things I would check would be the ICY DOCK, RAM and the graphics card. That model Mac Pro did not come with the ATI Radeon HD 5770 card. It came with either an NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 or ATI Radeon HD 4870.

-Is the RAM Apple or third-party. If third-party, do you still have the Apple RAM that came in the Mac Pro you could install to test with?
-Do you have the original graphics card?
-Is the ATI Radeon HD 5770 card a firmware flashed PC card?
-Unsupport tedpanic (cpu 2 caller" "TLB invalidation IPI timeout" "CPU(s) failed to respond to interrups", "unresponsive CPU bitmap" is a CPU/processor panic...shouldn't be related to the SSD.
-Since it works with a Lion startup disk, then it sounds like it could be an OS X software issue.

If you can, remove the ICY DOCK, install the original Apple RAM, and install the original graphics card, and see how it goes with a clean install of El Capitan only - no third-party drivers.

C

 

[honestone]

Thanks, Cory, for that clarification/correction abut 6 Gb/s and backward compatibility.

 

[Willy]

Hey thanks a lot for the replies. Unfortunately i don´t have the original RAM and neither the graphics card as i bought the computer second hand in 2012. I don´t know about the graphics card, how can i check if it´s firmwere flashed PC card? Sorry, don´t know much about graphics card.

Someone suggested to check the battery of the motherboard but i i´m not sure if it can cause this kind of panics. What do you think? Probably the best would be buy the OWC adapter for the disk but i´m affraid to put any money for it if it does not work either. Because i couldn´t get the laptop´s ssd work externally i doubt it´s the adaptor. Something there that don´t like ssd´s. Maybe they behave a bit differently compared to HHD disks and something in the computer doesn´t like it. Too bad i don´t have another graphics card or extra memory to try. I don´t have the money to start buying new memory and graphics card if i´m not sure one of them is the issue.

I will try once more to do a clean install tomorrow and see how it goes.

 

[Willy]

Hey thanks a lot for your help. I´ve found there´s a lot of threads like this in the internet people having problems with their computer and most of them never come back to let you know if they solved the problem or not.

So i solved the problem finally, after two weeks of googling and asking. Just wondering why i didn´t thought about it earlier. It was the wi-fi card, it was not combatible with newer osx. That explains it crashed with yosemite, el capitan ja sierra. I took the card off the computer and the crashes stopped there. I found this article about using newer OS in older macs and they mentioned that some wifi-cards are not compatible with newer osx. And that moment i was sure it was the cause of the problem. I remember when i bought the machine second hand, the guy who sold me the machine said that he had installed the wi-fi card himself there afterwards. So along with the graphic card, that was the only thing that was not original in the computer.

 

[Cory Cooper]

We very much appreciate you updating the thread. Glad you found the culprit of the crashes.

What is the brand/model of the Wi-Fi card that was causing the issue? Some third-party Wi-Fi cards, I assume this is a PCI card, aren't compatible with the Mac Pro. I always recommend buying a used Apple AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi card for older Mac Pros, as they always work.

C