Mac Pro early 2009 video problems

[James]

Hello all, I have a Mac Pro early 2009 desktop that I like very much. Have a lot of extras in it with 16 gig of ram, 2T of hard drive including 2 solid state drives. Works great !! .But have run into a problem with it. I was making a bootable flash drive for El Capitan, which is the OS it runs now seeing that Sierra won't work on it. I finished the process and in order to test it out I used sys prefs to change the boot drive to the flash drive.

Problem is when I then rebooted the computer it did indeed access the proper drive, but all I got was a black screen. It does seem like there is something there as when I blindly typed in my pass word I could hear some drive action but still nothing but black screen. Pressing the F12 will open and close my DVD drives.

I thought maybe the video card had gone out so I replaced it with another card but still all I get is black screen. Monitor, a 30" apple, works fine as I checked it out with my laptop and it works great so it has to be something in the Mac Pro itself.

So I wanted to change back to the original Mac drive but I can't as all I get is black screen. Tried booting from CD by holding down C when booting, no go. Tried booting to safe mode by holding down Shift when booting, No go black screen. Tried holding down option while booting, again no go black screen.

Evidently something in the MacPro went belly up, but what and how to fix it. Sure would like to get this otherwise great system going again especially as all my good stuff is there. Anyone have any ideas about what the problem might be ? Would be very grateful if you could fill me in. Thank you...

 

[lclev]

Not sure what happened. Try resetting the SMC and the PRAM/NVRAM.

If that does not help you might try stripping it down to just one drive - the original boot drive - so there is no other option for booting and see if it will select it and maybe give you a working screen.

Lisa

 

[pigoo3]

When you first power on the computer...are you getting the gray startup screen (is the display illuminating at all)? And if so...exactly when does it go black?

- Nick

Edit: Lisa beat me to it...I was also going to suggest both an SMC and NVRAM reset.

 

[ferrarr]

I usually do not set an installer drive as a boot drive, I hold option and then select the drive to install from. Why did you attempt to do it this way?

Have you tried to hold "option" down to see if you can access the boot options?

 

[James]

Not sure what happened. Try resetting the SMC and the PRAM/NVRAM.

If that does not help you might try stripping it down to just one drive - the original boot drive - so there is no other option for booting and see if it will select it and maybe give you a working screen.

Lisa

Thank you for your response. I tried zapping the pram and the the SMC and it didn't make any difference all I get is black screen start to finish. Have pulled all the other drives out so that only the Original Mac boot drive is there and still get the same results... black screen start to finish.

 

[James]

When you first power on the computer...are you getting the gray startup screen (is the display illuminating at all)? And if so...exactly when does it go black?

- Nick

Edit: Lisa beat me to it...I was also going to suggest both an SMC and NVRAM reset.

The screen is black before I turn the computer on and it stays that way all through the time I have power going to the computer and monitor. The monitor is good as I hooked two different Macbook laptops to it and it worked fine with both.

 

[James]

I usually do not set an installer drive as a boot drive, I hold option and then select the drive to install from. Why did you attempt to do it this way?

Have you tried to hold "option" down to see if you can access the boot options?

Seems to me like two different ways to do the same thing, but then what the heck do I know. And yes, I tried the OPTION key when booting up at least ten times now along with every key combo I could find and they all give the same results, black screen from start to finish.

 

[harryb2448]

As you found out not necessary to select the thumb drive to boot from in System Preferences, just boot and hold down 'C'. Turn everything off, unplug from power, keyboard, display etc and leave it overnight and hook up again and try. Next step is to remove graphics card, give it a clean, reaseat firmly and hook up both power leads.