MacPro 2009 Problems:'-(

I've this MacPro since April of '09 and in the past 4 months or so I have had serious issues with the booting. I recently did a clean install of Snow Leopard hoping it would sort out the bugs of a Leopard to SL upgrade install. There were bugs before but never like this. Compared to what's going on now, I miss the old bugs. Before I did the clean install, I had made a Vista bootcamp partition. I got a virus on Vista and opted to erase the HDD and that;s when I did the clean install.

It seems as though the booting issues coincide with my install but I know I didn't do anything wrong. I ran a hardware check with the install disc and everything seems fine, except I wonder if there is an issue with the startup disk. It's acting like an HDD that's about to kick. It's not old, it's the one that came with the Mac but perhaps it's defective? As of now it won't boot at all. I can't even go into safe mode to salvage the data on it. The Mac simply won't turn on.

I'm writing this post from a "pop-gun" Ubuntu nettop. I'm going to try installing Leopard with the install disc and then upgrading to SL. If that doesn't change anything, then perhaps it's the HDD, So I can sleep easy, can anyone confirm that this would definitely not be a motherboard issue?

The one thing that I hate about Mac warranty is that fact that I have lug this tank of a desktop to Apple for them to even do anything. Then it's several weeks. I have deadlines and work to do. I wish they could just take the HDD but that'll void my warranty for that part.

Anyway, and thoughts would be appreciated.

Instead of all the installing and reinstalling (you own a Mac not a PC) you need to determine if the HDD is indeed the culprit. If it is, have Apple replace it under the warranty.

What have you done to check the HDD? Have you booted your Pro with your original Leopard DVD or the Snow Leopard DVD and ran Disk Utility to verify and repair the HDD?

You can also run the extended Apple Hardware Test using your install DVD. See this LINK.

Since it seems your work depends on having your Pro up and running, have you been making regular backups using Time Machine or cloning to an external hard drive?

Regards.