09-03-2010, 05:27 PM

I was recently handed a Mac Pro at work, Intel based, reportedly not working. I can get it to boot to the apple logo and it will appear to load, then the screen will suddenly dim to grey and a message in english and 3 other languages will pop up asking me to restart or shut down. I am assuming this is hardware related. Ive swapped out harddrives and ram but still no luck. If I insert a boot cd and hold down option, it will show only the cd available to boot. The mouse will not work at this point, only keyboard. It will begin to boot from the cd and the the same dim screen and reboot message will appear, it will never make it into setup. I am rather mac illiterate so I am not sure what to do at this point. Can anyone make any suggestions?

09-03-2010, 09:55 PM

What you're experiencing are "kernel panics" (similar to the infamous BSOD in Windows). Kernel panics can be caused by many things but usually it's bad hardware. Since you swapped out the hard drive and memory, we can eliminate those.

Open the machine up and remove any cards that are not necessary and see what happens. Also, if you have a spare graphics card on hand (has to be for the Mac not PC) swap out the one that's in the Pro. If swapping the graphics card does no good, the problem might be caused by a bad logic board. (Motherboard)

For detailed instructions regarding various repairs, go to iFixit: The free repair manual. Make sure you have the model number on hand when you do.

09-03-2010, 09:56 PM

Originally Posted by reese8220

I was recently handed a Mac Pro at work, Intel based, reportedly not working.

How come this never happens to me!!!

- Nick

09-05-2010, 11:10 AM

Originally Posted by pigoo3

How come this never happens to me!!!

- Nick

Cause you would fix it