Hello,
I have a pretty old mac pro that I bought in late 2006, and I'm starting to have issues with it.
Here's a list:
1) Occasionally locking up for long periods of time: everything is frozen.
2) "pixel dust". Multicolored pixels on the black screen at startup. This was happening a year or so ago, but when I finally upgraded to snow leopard it went away. I recently moved and after I got my computer back up and running I've noticed it's back.
3)Ghosting and fragmenting windows as I move things around on the desktop. Corners of windows will "break off" and stay where the window originally was, even after refreshing. Sometimes I can "erase" the artifacts by dragging a window over it, and sometimes I can't.
4) Recently the displays got stuck in a weird startup loop, when I restarted the computer. What happened was that the blue screen hung around an extra long time before the desktop came up, and then just after the desktop displayed, it "whited out". I other words it looked like a white film was over it. Then the whole thing went dark, the blue screen came up, and the cycle repeated. It kept doing this until I hard shut down the whole thing. When I booted up again it took its' usual longer-than-normal time, but it came up and didn't do the cycle thing again. It has however looked as though it wants to after being woken from sleep from time to time.
What else.....
Oh yeah, since I use photoshop a lot I've noticed some weirdness in the Pshop interface while I'm working. Specifically in the layers palette. I'm working away and I notice out of the corner of my eye the layer icon for the layer I'm working on is flickering. When I finally stare straight at it I see that it is flickering between a checkered noise and it's usual representation.
It looks similar to the distorted icons I've been getting when I save items. Just the other day I wrote a note to myself using text edit and saved it to the desktop. The Icon wasn't the usual text edit icon. Instead it was a blast of multi colored static at first. A few days later I had to reboot the machine and then the icon looked normal!!!
Can anyone shed any light on my problem?
Also, I don't currently have my mac diagnostics disks. I inadvertently buried them in a storage locker when I moved, so I don't know what to do to diagnose this problem.
I've got an older version of tech tool pro 6, but whenever I run it, it reports that everything is just peachy, which it is not.
A friend of mine who has had some experience refurbing macs said he's afraid it's the capacitors on the logic board, in which case it's probably gonna be cheaper to buy an old used mac pro and swap out my hard drives, since motherboards are so expensive.
He thinks I should try getting a refurbed video card first though and trying that out. His reasoning is that if it isn't the video card, I can always recoup my money on the video card online.
So I don't know what to do. I just ran Tech tool again and it gave me the same results-all good. Which it is not.
Do I get new memory? Do I get a new video card? If so, what kind? I was wondering if I could trade up a bit since the cards for this computer are pretty inexpensive now, but I'm not sure what to get that's compatible with my machine.
Below are my system specs. If anyone has any advice I'd sure appreciate it.
Thanks.
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number of Processors: 2
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Processor): 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B08
SMC Version (system): 1.7f10
Serial Number (system): G86520E9UPZ
Hardware UUID: 00000000-0000-1000-8000-0017F205ADD4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500:
Chipset Model: NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x009d
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3008
Displays:
Cinema HD:
Resolution: 2560 x 1600
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Display Serial Number: CY6480D3UG1
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Cintiq21UX:
Resolution: 1600 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Display Serial Number: 7ECM01025
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
I have a pretty old mac pro that I bought in late 2006, and I'm starting to have issues with it.
Here's a list:
1) Occasionally locking up for long periods of time: everything is frozen.
2) "pixel dust". Multicolored pixels on the black screen at startup. This was happening a year or so ago, but when I finally upgraded to snow leopard it went away. I recently moved and after I got my computer back up and running I've noticed it's back.
3)Ghosting and fragmenting windows as I move things around on the desktop. Corners of windows will "break off" and stay where the window originally was, even after refreshing. Sometimes I can "erase" the artifacts by dragging a window over it, and sometimes I can't.
4) Recently the displays got stuck in a weird startup loop, when I restarted the computer. What happened was that the blue screen hung around an extra long time before the desktop came up, and then just after the desktop displayed, it "whited out". I other words it looked like a white film was over it. Then the whole thing went dark, the blue screen came up, and the cycle repeated. It kept doing this until I hard shut down the whole thing. When I booted up again it took its' usual longer-than-normal time, but it came up and didn't do the cycle thing again. It has however looked as though it wants to after being woken from sleep from time to time.
What else.....
Oh yeah, since I use photoshop a lot I've noticed some weirdness in the Pshop interface while I'm working. Specifically in the layers palette. I'm working away and I notice out of the corner of my eye the layer icon for the layer I'm working on is flickering. When I finally stare straight at it I see that it is flickering between a checkered noise and it's usual representation.
It looks similar to the distorted icons I've been getting when I save items. Just the other day I wrote a note to myself using text edit and saved it to the desktop. The Icon wasn't the usual text edit icon. Instead it was a blast of multi colored static at first. A few days later I had to reboot the machine and then the icon looked normal!!!
Can anyone shed any light on my problem?
Also, I don't currently have my mac diagnostics disks. I inadvertently buried them in a storage locker when I moved, so I don't know what to do to diagnose this problem.
I've got an older version of tech tool pro 6, but whenever I run it, it reports that everything is just peachy, which it is not.
A friend of mine who has had some experience refurbing macs said he's afraid it's the capacitors on the logic board, in which case it's probably gonna be cheaper to buy an old used mac pro and swap out my hard drives, since motherboards are so expensive.
He thinks I should try getting a refurbed video card first though and trying that out. His reasoning is that if it isn't the video card, I can always recoup my money on the video card online.
So I don't know what to do. I just ran Tech tool again and it gave me the same results-all good. Which it is not.
Do I get new memory? Do I get a new video card? If so, what kind? I was wondering if I could trade up a bit since the cards for this computer are pretty inexpensive now, but I'm not sure what to get that's compatible with my machine.
Below are my system specs. If anyone has any advice I'd sure appreciate it.
Thanks.
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3 GHz
Number of Processors: 2
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Processor): 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B08
SMC Version (system): 1.7f10
Serial Number (system): G86520E9UPZ
Hardware UUID: 00000000-0000-1000-8000-0017F205ADD4
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500:
Chipset Model: NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x009d
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3008
Displays:
Cinema HD:
Resolution: 2560 x 1600
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Display Serial Number: CY6480D3UG1
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Cintiq21UX:
Resolution: 1600 x 1200 @ 60 Hz
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Display Serial Number: 7ECM01025
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
