MacPro - white screen of death

[jjj]

My useless MacPro, a week after it's 5th/6th reinstall [in 12 months] has now died on me and only boots up to a white screen of death. It was 10.5.4 -I gave up on 10.5.6 too many bugs.
Obviously it's done this just after the year's warrantee ran out. Anyone else come across this issue? I found references to it online but they always seemed to pertain to MacBooks and low batteries with the odd mention of dead hard drives. Just before it stopped working, it wouldn't recognize any usb items plugged in and it was restarted in the hope that would work. Pathfinder also updated itself just before things went screwy.
Not in a rush to take it back to Apple store as several months of problems I had were due to their incompetence.

[jjlphoto]

I've been running Macs since 1993. Various 040 processor units, assorted PPC G3 and G4 units, towers, laptops, you name it. Presently, I have 5 Macs in my stable, the newest being a MacPro with twin 2.66gHz Xeon Duals, 9GB RAM, and the ATI x9100 graphics card. I have spent quite a bit of time on the Mac discussion forums, and other discussion forums as well. As a result, I service and support all my machines. I run a lot of my maintenance at the command line, use some Mac freeware utilities, and am very anal about keeping my boot drive clean and free of data. I have never had any problems with any of them.

[ddk]

My useless MacPro, a week after it's 5th/6th reinstall [in 12 months] has now died on me and only boots up to a white screen of death. It was 10.5.4 -I gave up on 10.5.6 too many bugs.
Obviously it's done this just after the year's warrantee ran out. Anyone else come across this issue? I found references to it online but they always seemed to pertain to MacBooks and low batteries with the odd mention of dead hard drives. Just before it stopped working, it wouldn't recognize any usb items plugged in and it was restarted in the hope that would work. Pathfinder also updated itself just before things went screwy.
Not in a rush to take it back to Apple store as several months of problems I had were due to their incompetence.

There are always lemons, but I've been using macs since 1991, from personal use to controlling production on factory floor and up to now have only seen that once. You might just be unlucky with a bad drive or CPU.

PS. and I'm not as methodical as John!

[flash]

My useless MacPro, a week after it's 5th/6th reinstall [in 12 months] has now died on me and only boots up to a white screen of death. It was 10.5.4 -I gave up on 10.5.6 too many bugs.
Obviously it's done this just after the year's warrantee ran out. Anyone else come across this issue? I found references to it online but they always seemed to pertain to MacBooks and low batteries with the odd mention of dead hard drives. Just before it stopped working, it wouldn't recognize any usb items plugged in and it was restarted in the hope that would work. Pathfinder also updated itself just before things went screwy.
Not in a rush to take it back to Apple store as several months of problems I had were due to their incompetence.

I'd take it back pronto, with a list of all the problems and how much time it's been with them in the past. You never know, they may just look at it under warranty (if you push hard enough). Leaving it on your desk won't help I'm afraid.

Good Luck.

Gordon

[TimG]

You may have some luck with calling Apple and/or taking it to the nearest Apple Store.

At any point over the past year or so have you called Apple Support (1-800-MY-APPLE) and had a tech troubleshoot or otherwise diagnose the issue?  

If so, they have a record/log of those calls and that support history just might work in your favor when trying to get the machine serviced out-of-warranty.

If Apple does agree to work with you, might want to give that AppleCare a second look, just in case.  It saved my a** a couple years ago when I ended up with a lemon Powerbook.

Good luck!

[jjlphoto]

.... and I'm not as methodical as John!

The only time I have seen Mac issues is from a few folks who do all their work just on the boot drive, and then have it crammed 99% to capacity. A formula for disaster.

[Ken Bennett]

AppleCare has saved my bacon more than once, on both laptops and towers. Now I consider it part of the purchase cost of any Mac. (With the exception of the "white spots" problem on a Macbook G4, the other issues were well past the 1-year standard warranty period.)

Good luck with your Mac Pro.

[vandevanterSH]

My useless MacPro, a week after it's 5th/6th reinstall [in 12 months] has now died on me and only boots up to a white screen of death. It was 10.5.4 -I gave up on 10.5.6 too many bugs.
Obviously it's done this just after the year's warrantee ran out. Anyone else come across this issue? I found references to it online but they always seemed to pertain to MacBooks and low batteries with the odd mention of dead hard drives. Just before it stopped working, it wouldn't recognize any usb items plugged in and it was restarted in the hope that would work. Pathfinder also updated itself just before things went screwy.
Not in a rush to take it back to Apple store as several months of problems I had were due to their incompetence.

Mine did that a few weeks ago....bad boot disk...Try booting from the OS disk

Steve

[John.Murray]

where does it fail when booting in verbose mode (cmd+v)?

[jjj]

The only time I have seen Mac issues is from a few folks who do all their work just on the boot drive, and then have it crammed 99% to capacity. A formula for disaster.

Not good on PCs either.  A colleague of mine  always complains about his sluggish MaBook Pro. I check and invariably its bursting at seams and desparately needs emptying.
I have 9 drives for data/swap files and the boot drive is for OS/progs only.

[jjj]

I've been running Macs since 1993. Various 040 processor units, assorted PPC G3 and G4 units, towers, laptops, you name it. Presently, I have 5 Macs in my stable, the newest being a MacPro with twin 2.66gHz Xeon Duals, 9GB RAM, and the ATI x9100 graphics card. I have spent quite a bit of time on the Mac discussion forums, and other discussion forums as well. As a result, I service and support all my machines. I run a lot of my maintenance at the command line, use some Mac freeware utilities, and am very anal about keeping my boot drive clean and free of data. I have never had any problems with any of them.

So 'they don't just work' then if you have to spend so much time looking after it! You do the same with a PC and you get no problems.
Apart from that, I have known numerous people with Macs to have issues. A tech writer for the Guardian newpaper in the UK, who is a big Apple fan wrote an article last year on how every single Apple product in his household had a fault of some kind. There were known issues with the previous MacBookPros and their graphics cards and Leopard and its numerous bugs has been complained about ever since it appeared it seems.

[jjj]

Mine did that a few weeks ago....bad boot disk...Try booting from the OS disk

Tried that, no joy. BTW - I did a fresh install last week as 10.5.6 was causing so many problems.

where does it fail when booting in verbose mode (cmd+v)?

I just tried that and suddenly it works again!?!     Though I had unplugged Ext  DVD drive in meantime. I may test that out to see if that is issue, but not until after I've done some work.
I'm begiining to loathe using computers as I reckon 50% of whatever computer gear I buy is faulty and it feels like the other 50% is buggy/badly designed. Only had one card reader that hasn't failed yet and I lost it as it's so small [SD only]! Though the other day my laptop was knocked off desk by cat and fell over a metre [onto rug luckily] and still works fine.

I will be replacing boot drive as I suspect that may be the issue in this case. It's a small/cheap corner cutting HD which has no place in such an expensive/high end machine anyway.

[jjj]

You may have some luck with calling Apple and/or taking it to the nearest Apple Store.

My Apple store weren't much cop with previous issues and in fact caused one of them by swapping memory from correct location to the wrong location whilst dealing with another problem. This was missed by another genius when returned yet again, who suggested more memory was needed and only when I was adding more myself and checked how memory should be positioned did I realise the "genius's" lack of knowledge.

[situgrrl]

The MBP I currently type on has been nothing but a pain in the rear, even despite applecare.  I've also experienced less than stellar service at Apple Stores - their "Genius's" are school kids with diagnostic iPods but little genuine knowledge of hardware.  Since the iPhone, it all seems to have gone wrong at Apple.  Leopard is buggy and the hardware they release now barely seems to target their core consumers and the people that have given them their enviable reputation.  I'm not about to bail to Windows but unless they start listening and release a mid-tower at iMac prices or less - using desktop components, give an option of matt screens and iron out a bunch of other irritations that you should not suffer when paying for a premium product, I'm likely to go hackintosh.

[TimG]

My Apple store weren't much cop with previous issues and in fact caused one of them by swapping memory from correct location to the wrong location whilst dealing with another problem. This was missed by another genius when returned yet again, who suggested more memory was needed and only when I was adding more myself and checked how memory should be positioned did I realise the "genius's" lack of knowledge.

OK, so try calling Apple Support and let them try troubleshooting over the phone.  

I've had issues with certain Apple Retail locations too, but seems I get consistent service over the phone, maybe because those calls are recorded/monitored?

You may be able to push for a new machine if you've got service records indicating a lemon.

[jjj]

The MBP I currently type on has been nothing but a pain in the rear, even despite applecare.  I've also experienced less than stellar service at Apple Stores - their "Genius's" are school kids with diagnostic iPods but little genuine knowledge of hardware.  Since the iPhone, it all seems to have gone wrong at Apple.  Leopard is buggy and the hardware they release now barely seems to target their core consumers and the people that have given them their enviable reputation.  I'm not about to bail to Windows but unless they start listening and release a mid-tower at iMac prices or less - using desktop components, give an option of matt screens and iron out a bunch of other irritations that you should not suffer when paying for a premium product, I'm likely to go hackintosh.

My view of Apple entirely. They are no different from any other company in that making money is their main priority [nothing morally wrong with that] and they've finally realised there is far more money in the mass consumer market with the iPod/iPhone that in looking after the more demanding pro customers.
Graphics pros are most certainly no longer their core customers and they seem to be being sidelined.

I have spoken to Applecare a while back about a non techy thing and they were very helpfull I have to say.
Getting my unreliable PoS replaced is very unlikely as it's just out of guarantee and replacing lemons is very hard to do in the UK.
Heck I've having trouble getting the ^&^%wipes who lied and missold me my new phone contract to sort it out, despite their admitting they were in the wrong.

[Rick_Allen]

Any chance your boot drive was a seagate? I just had a bunch of pro's all go down with seagates as the boot drive. Swapped them and all good.