Sigh. Mac Pro won't boot.

[Mike Johnson]

The kext thing makes me think there is a permissions problem.

Can you boot into single user mode?

I seriously doubt it would help but have you reset the SMC?

[ka jowct]

Everything that can be reset has been reset.

Could not boot into safe mode.

It has been flaky about powering on for a while, although for several months it has started up reliably, either on the first press of the power button, or on the second.

I don't think any repair place will be interested in diagnosing it, since there are no parts available for it from the Mothership anymore.

[AllGold]

Bad video card.

Edit: I posted that without reading through all posts. It's just the first thing that came to mind. I still think it is either the video card specifically, or a similar hardware problem, possibly the logic board.

It definitely wouldn't hurt to run a full Hardware Test.

[ka jowct]

I allowed the recovery partition to reinstall Mavericks on a guinea pig drive. It is booting from that drive, but there is still something thoroughly fscked up because I can't access the other internal drive I put back in or the backup drive that I reconnected. I don't have permission to even open them and see the contents. Trying to fix that using Get Info results in nothing: it stays stuck on the "fetching" part of the ownership options. Everything in the list shows "custom" access and my user name is not listed. If I add my user (it's an admin account) to the list, it gets "custom" access automatically and that can't be changed in any way.

Never had this problem before. I repaired permissions on the drive that is now booting, but that did nothing for the other drives' permissions issues. The internal drive doesn't show as an option in the startup disk prefs. Not even greyed out. Disk Utility says there is nothing wrong with it.

Just tried installing another boot drive (Yosemite) and attempted to boot from it. No dice: it seems to be starting up, and stalls after the progress bar has reached about the 30% mark.

The old drive with the reinstalled Mavs is the only one that fully boots. Running the hardware test disk now.

Update: Hardware test finds no problem. I tried running the extended test, but it timed out, and then couldn't be stopped. Rebooted and ran the short test, which says everything is hunky-dory.

[anonymouse1]

1. Does Mavs run on different disks?

2. is the problem with a specific hard drive bay? Have you tried just having the one HD in when you boot, no external?

3. Just for grins, have you tried it without the KVM?

4. AHT doesn't thoroughly test RAM. Again, for grins, I'd try one RAM stick at a time.

No promises for any of these; I'd just try them before buying a new machine...

[anonymouse1]

Again, it's strange that you can boot from the one drive. For more grins, I'd try downloading, say, the Sierra installer onto that drive that does boot, and try installing it on another drive, and see if that drive will boot another machine.

Has the machine had it's firmware updated?

[ka jowct]

It has only one drive installed right now. Trying it without the KVM would be a giant pain, and a last resort.

However, the external drive that I was booted from when this began is now refusing to boot attached to my MBP, and is partially locked. I get a permissions error when trying to access those volumes. Can't boot from the one that isn't locked.

[C(-)ris]

I wouldn't be so quick to call that machine dead. It sounds like something else is causing problems or a combination of multiple problems.

When I run into something like this that I can't figure out I go straight to the basics. Remove all third party cards, devices, ram, etc. Pull all the hard drives. Put factory ram back in or just 2 sticks in and test. Boot from an external that you know works in other machines, or from an OS installer on a flash drive. If it boots to the flash drive take the next step and install a hard drive. Repartition and wipe it and try and do an OS install. If it crashes on the OS install swap the two sticks of ram with two others or try a different hard drive that you are absolutely certain is working. You just need to run through methodically testing parts to see what makes a difference.

[anonymouse1]

I'd connect the drives that won't work to the MBP, and run Disk Utility/Drive Genius/Etc. on them FROM THE MBP. They don't need to be mounted for that.

[The Grim Ninja]

This does sound like a hardware problem. I'd lean toward video related. Emergency partitions leave out drivers/features a full install will include and can trigger problems. For example, Quartz Extreme, a video acceleration feature, will only be enabled in a full OS Boot.