Mac Pro :: Unable To Boot System / Screen Flashed To Black Off
Feb 19, 2009
Today I came home from work and turned on my Mac Pro. At first everything appeared normal and I walked away on a call for a few minutes. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the screen was flashing to black off and on. I turned off the tower to try and restart it and now it wont boot!
I have removed all other hard drives aside from the boot drive. Re-seated all RAM. Tried various combination's of RAM. Tried to load the snow leopard install only to get a kernal panic. Tried again with just RAM and received a kenal panic as well.
*Update* It seems that the RAM when I swapped it out was VERY hot for only being in a short period of time (under 10 min). Not sure if this helps.
The other day my 1st gen MBP functioned without any probs, until it suddenly powered down. After I removed the question marks from my eyes, I offcourse tried to reboot it.
But it never makes it beyond the grey screen, sometimes untill the apple logo, sometimes not even that far. Offcours I googled around first to gather some info before I decided to put this problem down on this board. I found this could be a HDD failure, but in those cases, with other people, it could be powered holding apple + s, and doing some checks that way. Mine doesn't even come that far
I have a second hand 1st gen MBP with upgraded HDD and RAM, snow leopard, and coincidently since last week no more battery... so i may have powered down a completely unprepared mac by tripping over the wire, once or twice...
I own an iBook G4. I could not get it to boot up, it would just go to a grey screen with the apple symbol and a timer/clock that looked like a gear.FYI: I may provide more information than necessary in the text below. I'm not sure what is and isn't relevant.
Following some advice I found in this forum I got out my old OS disks to boot from the disc instead of the hard drive. I intended to archive the old hard drive and install my latest OS (10.4.6 on the disc, 10.4.11 was the version I had been running on the machine, I believe). The machine told me it needed 4.5 Gb to install 10.4.6 Tiger, but I only had 4.0 Gb left on the hard drive. So instead, I archived and installed with the OS that came with the computer originally, 10.3.4.
I got things going, did the archive and install, and got to the log in screen. Unfortunately, I could not remember the password, so I booted up in single user mode, and entered the following to get into the machine:
1. mount -uw / 2. rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone 3. shutdown -h now
This got me in with a new admin login, and I started up in 10.3.4. I soon noticed that I could still see all of the files that I put on the hard drive on my old operating system. I thought I shouldn't be able to see them, but since I could I decided to try to copy them to an external hard drive. When I did, I got an error message saying that there was a read/write error. I was not entirely surprised, but I decided it was time to turn back to the forums for help.
What I want to do is copy everything from my old hard drive onto an external hard drive, make room on the iBook hard drive to reinstall my latest operating system (10.4.6). Once I've done that I'd like to get the essential files back onto the iBook from the external hard drive and continue using my computer (even though it is a dinosaur).
I've been reading this site for a while now, first time I'm posting. I recently purchased 8 GB of RAM for my 2010 13" MBP. There are two 4 GB DDR3 PC3-10500 1333mhz sticks. When I install them in the laptop my computer does not get past the apple logo boot screen (the spinning disc freezes). However, I can boot into Windows (boot camp) without issues.
Also, when I pair either of the 4 GB sticks with one of my old 2 GB stock sticks the laptop boots up fine in OS X. The system profiler registers it as 6 GB of 1067 mhz RAM (the stock sticks are 1067 mhz)
So I have a DYNEX 21 inch HD TV conected up to my MBP via the VGA connection route. My problem is that when I want a program (or more specifically in this case a game) to go into fullscreen mode it automatically goes to my primary monitor and turns the other screen black. I know I can switch the primary monitor from my actual laptop screen to the TV however I just want the game to be full screen on the TV while still having access to my dock and everything on my laptop.
When I turn my Imac, it goes from the white screen to a black screen, then blue and then desktop. The whole process is fast, but is not normal. (at least is not like my previous MBP or the videos that I have seen on youtube) At the black screen stage, I can see some boot up information, etc, It is fast so I am not able to read it all. It looks like when booting an old windows or dos machine How can I change this? Is this normal? It also shows the screen when I shut down.
I am in a pickle. I turned off my pro for the night and when i went to turn it back on I get a black screen and the white light not flashing. at a lost for what to do next. I followed the Apple troubleshooting tips but nothingis working. I can hear the drive hum but nothing else happens.
I just had a quick power interruption for about a second while I was using my laptop. The laptop shut down and will not boot up. The screen is black. Any ideas on what is the problem?
Loaded pics up for the 1st time from my 7d into Aperture 1.5 and left my computer on, woke up and it wouldn't come out of sleep. I did a hard shutdown holding down the power button and the screen just stays black and I never hear the chime, light on power button is solid white. Since I'm on vacation with my wife and infant daughter I don't have time to mess around troubleshooting but see it may be a failed logic board? Do they just fail randomly or what? My aunt that I'm staying with turned off a surge protector a light was plugged into, I was using her power charger for her MacBook Pro and only this morning found out it was plugged directly into the outlet below the surge protector was on that she flipped off.
Could that have created a surge on the other plug or something? She does this all the time with her MacBook Pro plugged in and its never created a problem, I'm writing this post from her computer right now! (Only brought the Mac out because my iPad wouldn't load the photos for some reason, don't know if it has something to do with the HD video or because I also had photos from my Canon 50d on there or if that has something to do with my Mac's problem?) I've attempted an SMC restart and it does the same thing? I'm now extremely stressed thinking I may have lost all my pics that I haven't backed up in months of my infant daughter. When I start it up I hear an initial sound of a hardrive spin or fan but then its basically silent.
I've encountered an interesting, if not incredibly frustrating, problem on my Macbook Pro and I was hoping someone might be able to help me diagnose and rectify it. I had installed XP via Boot Camp 1.1 in August successfully and used my XP partition for a few months. Then, one day, when I went to boot into XP, after selecting my XP partition at the startup screen, my computer went to a black screen with no cursor or error message. I had no idea what to do, so I decided to simply delete my partition and create a new one and reinstall Windows. After deleting it and firing up Boot Camp, I encountered the very same black screen when Boot Camp restarted my computer. It would go to the grey startup screen first, but then to a black screen. The XP install disc would seemingly spin up properly, but nothing ever showed on screen. I then tried any number of possible fixes, including zeroing my entire hard disc and reinstalling OS X and Boot Camp (now 1.3), but have had the same result each time. I have begun to suspect that the problem is related to the EFI, but I don't know very much about that sort of things and don't really know how to adjust its settings or reinstall it. I've downloaded the most recent EFI firmware, but when I try to open the file OS X insists that my firmware is already up to date. I've been scouring the internet for the last couple weeks and am yet to come up with a solution.
I have an older MacBook and when I bought it, from a friend, it already had windows running on it. Just the other day I went to restart my computer and all I got want the black screen saying that the computer was turned off wrong and to choose the start up mode. I tried the last known option and nothing happened besides restarting to the same screen. Then I tried the normal mode and that didn't work and safe mode did the same thing, starting back up to the black screen. Is there something that I can do/fix, or does this require some professional.
I have a MacBook Pro with Leopard. On boot, I get a screen of vertical blue stripes with the Apple logo, sometimes intact, sometimes split across the stripes. The spinning activity wheel is there too. After about 30 seconds, it gives up the ghost and the screen goes blank. It's still powered on, but just the screen is blank.
I've attached an image of what the screen looks like.
I've tried Command Option PR to reset the PRAM and VRAM but the problem remains. Any ideas?
I didn't have an internet connection so I rebooted the computer -- I wish I'd just rebooted the modem now. When it "rebooted" it didn't boot up but a black screen with a lot of white type saying the start up of various things failed -- it looked like a PC script type thing. Then that type disappeared leaving a black screen and just a white cursor that moves when I hit the space bar. This is the computer for the place I'm working and I'm not even sure what generation Mac it is, though I'll try to find out. I hope, hope, hope that there is some kind of simple resolution to this.
I have bought a flashed 4870 for my 1st Gen Mac Pro and it works fine. But yesterday i wanted to plug a second 23" ACD in and woundered that its not working. Can i flash my card with another ROM so that i can use two monitors? In a german forum there are some people who has the same card and for them it works with 2 monitors ...
With regular startup I get the flashing question mark and can hear the failed hard drive click and spin. After getting the DVD to boot in the drive (it doesn't suck it in right away), I get an apple logo and pinwheel like I should, but after about 30 seconds it goes to a black (blank) screen and the DVD spins down, but not all the way. The computer is still on, but nothing happens.
Oddities:
<>If I start it with an iMac 10.4 DVD I can boot to the install screen just fine, but can't install because it's an iMac DVD. I can erase and partition the drive fine (not the dead one, another one I have).
<>Safe mode boot does the same thing, but takes 20 times as long to boot
<>Retail OSX 10.4 DVD does not boot at all, but that one might be for PowerPC computers. I get the flashing question mark folder.
I have a problem: when I restart my Early 2008 MacBook Pro there is no "chime" and the screen remains black. The keyboard doesn't light up or respond to any input, and worse still, the "lid button" light on the front of the notebook remains illuminated, it doesn't blink, it just stays on, shining in my face. I loaded a CD into the optical drive to see if I could use the keyboard to eject it, but this test failed. Now, when I turn on my MBP, I hear the optical drive spinning and the quiet whirr of the fan inside.
I looked on Apple's support website about what to do when a Mac refuses to boot. I tried all of the methods they listed, but since my Mac doesn't respond to keyboard input, all of the techniques failed. Having exhausted everything I could think of, I decided to post here hoping someone could suggest something. I was just on the verge of completing my portfolio website and I would like to salvage my data at least.
My G4 recently will not boot. I get the chime, it starts to boot, but almost never completes before I get the "you must restart you Mac" screen.I have the correct hardware test disc. I started using that two days ago. It still has not completed testing the logic board and the system is unresponsive. I guess that means the board is fried?
Info: PowerMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11), G4 Quicksilver, 1Ghz dual processor
I've had problems with my Mac for a while now. First of all, it indicated ram problems with 2 beeps. I later fixed this by moving and changing around modules. It was solved, but now a new problem. The Mac seems to turn on, making its iconic sound for startup, but the screen remains black. After about a half to one minute, the fans go crazy and I have to shut it off. I've tried a few things like holding shift or alt, but that doesn't work as it doesn't even display a white screen.
I need to know what to do and I don't really have the time to buy new parts right now. I'm really a windows based pc fixer by the way so I'm new to fixing macs.
My MacBook is making the startup sound but goes straight to a black/dark grey screen. In other words you can see the screen switching on but it's blank. It's in charge mode, has no other external peripherals attached and it's updated to most recent OSX Yosemite.
I only purchased it in May of this year (refurbished). I have tried booting in to safe mode but again the screen remains the same.
bought old 12-in. ibook A1005/2002 (I assume G3) at yard sale today. screen is black, but hard drive mounts in target disk mode on my eMac, working well! how can i get system info for the ibook in target disk mode? all i see is the it's running 10.4.11, hard drive size and used/free space. i'd like to know RAM, CPU speed, etc. secondly, what could be wrong? boots up with chime, no fan/other noise, stays on and keyboard lights work, but screen is black.
I just tried installing ubuntu via bootcamp. I went through the whole installation process then it asked me to restart. Black Screen for 5min. Manually restarted and my system would only start to another black screen that said GRUB, with no other options. I took the hdd out that I installed ubuntu on and I would get the same problem. Did this somehow change my bios/mac equivalent. Finally was able to get into osx by holding down left mouse button on startup (nothing else would work).
when working on my new Imac sometimes the machine put itself in sleep mode! The screen turns black and I have to enter my password. Sometimes it happens 2 times in 1 minute; other times once in 1 hour.
Yesterday the trusted and loyal MacPro froze and on reboot kept going straight to a screen which looks like a modern art collaboration between Kasparov, a robot and the ghost of Jackson Pollock. You can see the artwork in the pictures below. Lion has recently been installed. Main programmes used are Logic and Final Cut Pro. I have taken the machine apart and dusted everything down, talked sternly to the ciruit boards, offered bribes to the CPU and even played it Salsa - I figured that this works in breaking the spirits of kidnappers, so it may work with the hard disk. There is a suspicion lingering that the computer was aware of a make or break week of editing coming up and decided to stop working in protest (it is getting on a bit), so I let it rest for a bit before trying another reboot.
I've reseated memory and my hard drive, but still if I bump it freezes or black screens. I'm going to pickup an external hard drive to backup my data, because this is scaring the crap out of me.
On my Mac Pro i have windows XP on hard drive number 2. I went to boot to it today after installing a program and nothing happens. The monitors are receiving information but there just a black screen.
Not sure what i should do considering that i can still access the drive and files from the MAC Side. I can also get to the boot screen to select safe mode but that also does nothing.
It is a early 09 Mac Pro...i have been using the computer this way since last April. Cant figure out what happened.
Very occasionally the screen on my iMac (early 08 24") goes blank and it makes an incredibly loud static sound that's independent of the volume control setting. The power then needs disconnecting to restart the machine. Haven't been able to tie it to any specific program. Apple Care asked I leave it on logged in on a new user account (at the time I originally thought it only happened in sleep mode, but have since discovered this is not the case).
It's happened maybe 3 or 4 times in the same number of months. I've only found one similar case on the net, with someone suggesting it was Safari 4 beta, which I've found not to be the case with mine. It's on extended warranty. I think there's something seriously wrong with it (it's already had the hard drive and power supply replaced).
