Apple Users

eppur_se_muova

(37,500 posts) Mon Jul 6, 2015, 02:41 PM Jul 2015

10 steps to take when your Mac won't start up (MacWorld UK) -- hope one works for me.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/steps-take-when-your-mac-wont-start-3423817/

This is particularly handy to have if you bought a used Mac and don't have the installer disks for the current system. It's written for 10.8, but some of the tricks go back to the earliest OS X release. I'm going to be trying these out for 10.7, see if I can get my Mac Pro to find the SATA drive again. It can boot from the internal (ATAPI) or USB CD/DVD drive but not from the internal HD I've been using since I bought it -- or from a clone I just made of that drive. Unfortunately, the only bootable CD I can find is Lubuntu -- the Mac Pro 2,1 supposedly can run 10.4 to 10.7, but I can't get it to boot from a 10.6.3 installer disk -- and Lubuntu can't see any SATA disk, only the two CD/DVD drives. I hope it's not the whole SATA bus that's gone bad.

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10 steps to take when your Mac won't start up (MacWorld UK) -- hope one works for me. (Original Post) eppur_se_muova Jul 2015 OP

The installer disk that you have RoccoR5955 Jul 2015 #1

It can't see ANY SATA disk. I can boot an iMac (Core2Duo) from the old System 10.7 HD ... eppur_se_muova Jul 2015 #2

RoccoR5955

(12,471 posts)

1. The installer disk that you have

Reply to eppur_se_muova (Original post)

Mon Jul 6, 2015, 02:46 PM

Jul 2015

may be in the wrong file format for that Mac.

A mac pro 2,1 seems very old. Perhaps it needs an EFI update.
If you can't see the SATA disk, probably the disk has gone south. Try a different one, just unformat it however you can.

eppur_se_muova

(37,500 posts)

2. It can't see ANY SATA disk. I can boot an iMac (Core2Duo) from the old System 10.7 HD ...

Reply to RoccoR5955 (Reply #1)

Mon Jul 6, 2015, 03:14 PM

Jul 2015

but the MacPro won't boot from it.

If there's a disk there that's the wrong format, it should still show up as a disk, just unreadable. I have two SATA disks that I can read and write from on the iMac (mounted in a USB box) but neither shows up at all on the Mac Pro. These two machines are about the same age -- neither supports 10.8 (that's where you get into the EFI update), but both should support both 10.6 and 10.7.

Oh, and I *never* see a white-screen "sad Mac" or broken folder -- it goes into a UNIX-like inverse-video text-only screen that says "bootable device not found" unless I have that Lubuntu disk inserted and hold down the C key on boot.

So far, it really seems like a problem affecting the whole internal SATA bus. I do have a couple more things to try (from the article) and may even have an empty partition on a FireWire drive that I can try making into a 10.6.8 boot disk (has to be done on the iMac, since I need Software Update). I'm not giving up yet, but it sure is costing me a lot of time to run through all the permuations and combinations -- especially since the Mac Pro never restarts automatically -- have to force power-down.

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