Mac Pro White Screen With Cursor

here is my collected guidance on getting silver tower Mac Pro 2012 and older working:

Internet Recovery is NOT available in ROM in most Macs before 2011 models. So you will need to explore this list of other possibilities.

When your computer was released, the way you launched the required Utilities (including Disk Utility and Installer) was to use the ones on the Release software DVD. if you have a model-specific version for your model (unlikely) or a Full Retail 10.6 DVD, you use its Utilities, boot and install that version, then use Software update to get to 10.6.8 with all updates, which is the version that can reach out to the Mac App store for the first time and download and install a later version.

10.11 El Capitan is a recommended waypoint, even if you expect to install a later version, because it has an improved Mac App Store that makes getting later versions much easier.

The next source of Utilities is the Recovery Partition on the boot drive. If your drive spins up, even if not MacOS bootable, it may still have a usable recovery partition. To get there, try invoking recovery with Command-R or hold Alt/Option at startup and see if the recovery partition shows as a potentially bootable drive.

Recovery Partitions up through 10.12 Sierra can be found with the Startup Manager (Alt/Option boot). At 10.13, if an SSD boot drive is used, the format is transitioned to APFS. The Recovery partition is present, but it is inside the APFS container, and the Startup Manager on an older Mac may not be able to find it.

The next source of Utilities to consider is any MacOS 10.6 or later versions on any additional drives or clones you may (or may not) have lying about, even if they are from another Mac. You can use those Utilities to ERASE a new drive, and start the installer to place MacOS on the new drive.

The next source to consider is a Time Machine backup drive. Versions from 10.7.3 or later are said to contain a Recovery Partition that could be used to ERASE a new drive and run Installer to place MacOS on a new drive. Time Machine backups created in MacOS 11 Big Sur or later are APFS format, and APFS format backup drives do NOT have a Recovery partition.

Two Mac solutions:

With certain combinations of new and old Mac, you can use Target Disk mode to repair, erase, and install on the drive of the old Mac, by treating it as a disk drive on the new Mac.

Transfer files between two Mac computers using target disk mode - Apple Support

IF you have a different Mac, you can use it to download MacOS install image, then interrupt the process and create a BOOTABLE USB-stick Installer/Utilities stick. BOOTABLE is key, because the way you will install from this USB-Stick is to BOOT the USB-stick, and use its Utilities to ERASE your drive and start the Installer. here is the article on bootable USB-Stick Utilities/Installer:

What you need to create a bootable installer

• A USB flash drive or other secondary volume formatted as GUID partition Map, Mac OS Extended, with at least 14GB of available storage

• A downloaded installer for macOS Big Sur, Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, or El Capitan.

The Terminal command assumes that Installer in located in the /Applications folder.

from:

How to create a bootable installer for macOS

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support

NB>> if you name your incoming USB stick exactly MyVolume, you can copy and paste the very long Terminal command from the article directly into the Terminal window, without having to change anything.

<< plain white screen with a cursor that moves >>

Getting to that point means your Mac PASSED the power-on Self test and has enough Working RAM to boot up.

<< cursor that moves up when I move the mouse left, down when I move the mouse right and nothing when I move the mouse up and down >>

That mouse movement is not an indicator of any pathological issue, just that that mouse and ROM-resident default mouse drivers from 2008 or older are not a good match.

-----

Seeing no Icons appear on the screen says that this Startup Manager routine could not find any drive that appeared bootable -- i.e, had a reasonable MacOS partition and boot.efi file on it to load up.

that could mean it sees no drives, or it could mean none appear bootable.

Grant Bennett -Alder is correct… depending on what MacOS was installed on it previously, you may be able to access the built in Recovery Partition ( snow leopard/lion on up) by rebooting and holding down Apple + R keys together …. From there you should be able to access Disk Utility… you might want to buy a DVD copy of Snow Leopard and use that for booting up/starting up from… price was around $32…

John b

Macs can read whatever drive you decide to use, provided the boot loader is set up for Mac EFI booting, which precedes and is a bit divergent from Universal EFI booting.

For macOS to boot up, they need a Mac Volume on the drive (a Mac-formatted drive) once MacOS HFS+ only, now expanded by Apple File System as well. They can read many other formats once MacOS is up and running.