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MacPro 4,1 starting with grey screen after SMC and PRAM resets

My Mac Pro (Early 2009) running El Capitan starts up with a grey screen, I have to do an SMC and a PRAM reset each time. Trying to wake it from sleep mode doesn't work when a password is required to wake it up, only after deactivating this feature waking from sleep is possible. With password required, either the password field remains inactive, or after typing in the password, it keeps spinning.

The only other flaw I noticed is that trying to generate a system report (from About this mac) causes beachballing with every else inactive and inaccessible.

EtreCheck renders nothing.

Any idea?

Thanks!

Posted on Jul 27, 2024 12:52 PM

52 replies

Jul 28, 2024 9:47 AM in response to Nikolai Franke

Sorry I did not understand that your system is no longer bootable at all.

if Option startup is truly not working, then your Mac is very sick. But since you said it did draw a gray screen, I presume it is still working, but nothing suitable could be shown.

if we presume that it is only your boot drive getting flaky, you should be able to connect a different bootable drive and use Option-startup.

Jul 28, 2024 9:53 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Unfortunately no. Whatever keys I hold, whatever I connect or disconnect, and regardless of how often I reset SMC/PRAM, all I get is a screen with absolutely nothing on it but light grey. No cursor, no options, no writing, nothing. Every single pixel on that screen is light grey. Nothing moves, never. I left it on for an hour, no change.

Jul 28, 2024 10:38 AM in response to Nikolai Franke

if you have not Done so lately, try a Hardware Reset:

Power down your Mac and remove the AC power cord.

Press the power-on button (with the power cord still removed) for a quarter minute to do a deep discharge of all power.

Then reconnect AC power and try to start up again.

Jul 28, 2024 12:49 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Interestingly enough, that worked, if only once. All worked normally, albeit slower in starting up than usually. Just to be sure I shut it down and tried starting up again. This second time I was back to plain grey, but still, maybe the fact that the hardware reset worked for one startup teaches something? Do you have any notion what governs the startup procedure and gets confused time and again?

(Btw. on your second last—nothing to be sorry about of course, you are helping, and I appreciate it!)

Jul 29, 2024 12:28 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks, good idea (somewhat obvious, I still didn't think of it, so—thanks). I did take out the startup disk, starting up now I got first a darker grey apple logo on the otherwise unchanged light grey screen, then a no-go sign replacing the apple logo, then back to the apple logo, and so on. I'm fairly certain at least two other bootable volumes connected but I may of course be wrong.

Does this tell you anything of use?

Jul 29, 2024 1:39 PM in response to Nikolai Franke

<< a no-go sign replacing the apple logo. >>

the no go "prohibitory" signs says, the drive appeared to be bootable, but on loading very early major components, one was wrong version, damaged, or missing. Boot up from this drive can not continue.

Jul 29, 2024 4:05 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

ok, I see. I'll have to find a bootable drive then, and see if it starts up with that, and then re-install the system, right? I'll see if some repair shop has one (unless you happen to have another idea?)

Jul 29, 2024 4:49 PM in response to Nikolai Franke

if you have another Mac, you can get access to some downloads, such as MacOS 10.11 El Capitan, or 10.13 High Sierra. You may be able to unpack it and make yourself a bootable MacOS installer on a USB-Stick.

The earliest MacBook Pro 2018 shipped with MacOS 10.13, so it might actually be able to boot from a hand-made 10.13 USB-stick installer, PROVIDED you had a chat with Recovery Security Utility to allow booting from external drives.

this can, in theory be done on a Windows machine, but requires some developer-caliber software, and results are not guaranteed.

You need a USB-stick of size at least 8 GB for this exercise, that is completely erase-able. later versions required a larger, at least 16 GB, USB-stick.

Jul 30, 2024 12:45 PM in response to Nikolai Franke

oh put that way too complicated stack exchange procedure away.

download the .dmg.

double-click to open it. the disk image mounts. it contains a .pkg.

double-click the .pkg to open it. It runs and PLACES the Installer App in the /Applications folder. (it DOES NOT INSTALL)

The 'make a bootable installer USB-stick' scripts REQUIRE that the Installer Application be present and located in the /Applications folder. The tools you invoke with those complex terminal commands are INSIDE the Installer image.

--------

Make sure you have named your USB stick exactly MyVolume.

Open the article with the 'make a USB stick commands'. Open a Terminal window. Select the entire Terminal command from the article and Copy to the clipboard. Click in the terminal window and PASTE the entire command in the terminal window. Press return, and you are going.

Jul 30, 2024 2:15 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Great, that worked! Thanks so much. Now I have the installer open, and would try and install the system on an empty internal disk, intending to then migrate from the previous system disk, then clean install on that previous disk, and finally migrate back to that one (since it is the only ssd I have for that 15 years old machine). Or is there a smarter way to repair the system without losing settings, apps etc.?

Jul 30, 2024 4:58 PM in response to Nikolai Franke

if you install on the internal disk, the Installer will be erased at the end of the process. if you install anywhere else, the Installer will be retained, and you can create a USB-stick installer later, and just set it aside for emergencies. Because your Mac Pro 4,1 does not have built-in recovery, making the bootable installer of El Capitan or later would be a good thing to do.

Booting from an external drive us a great way to attempt to rescue a failing drive, because the criteria for Mounting a drive are far lower than for Booting from the same drive.

The long term solution to retaining your files is to make Time Machine backups. After the initial backup, they just happen at low priority in the background, and the Time Machine backup is MUCH more likely to be there when you need it.

Jul 31, 2024 6:02 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Good to know about the installer being erased, thanks.

I have a Time Machine backup of the startup drive. The ssd containing the previous system seems damaged, it doesn't even appear in disk utility anymore (regardless in which bay). I installed the system on a spare drive, works well if slow, but I see no way to use the existing Time Machine backup to restore the previous system (in its working state). Do you?

Jul 31, 2024 6:14 AM in response to Nikolai Franke

A drive that will not tell Disk Utility it make&Model, and a reasonable non-zero size/capacity, is the definition of dead.

It can not even be erased, so it is a door-stop.

as it was dying, it was teasing you by occasionally working for a while before it quit again.

Jul 31, 2024 6:51 AM in response to Nikolai Franke

Sure. you can restore a time machine backup to a drive that has been erased, and has MacOS installed already.

(it MAY be possible in 10.12 to also restore the system, but that feature is being eliminated. also, to avoid carrying a damaged system forward, it is Best Practice to ALWAYS install MacOS anew.)

now you could do that:

• starting from your slower external drive

• from a USB stick BOOTABLE installer

• using your other Mac, as you just did, but move the drive to a bay when MacOS has been installed.

Jul 31, 2024 4:46 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Sounds good. Now, a new problem (one at each step … ) — I created another bootable installer (on the very same USB stick), and it boots fine on another mac but not on the one in question (the MacPro). However when I take out the system drive from that MacPro so that no bootable system remains in the computer, it does once again boot from the USB stick. A riddle to me in itself, it makes it impossible to boot from it in order to restore the previous system from the Time Machine backup to the new system. Any idea why? Thanks, once more.

MacPro 4,1 starting with grey screen after SMC and PRAM resets