Mac Pro Cold Starting Problem
My apologies if this topic has already been solved here or on any other Mac forums.
I've been following the forums regarding problems when cold starting a Mac Pro. I've had this problem on and off for over 12 months now, and in spite of using some of the suggested solutions, I've had little success in solving it. Now I'm not an IT expert but it occurred to me that if the problem only occurred when cold starting [i.e. starting up in a cold environment] then the solution might be something to do with the temperature inside and outside the Mac Pro? I couldn't find a simple solution on any of the Mac forums [including Apple's vast support] so I tried a few experiments anyway. One solution which was suggested on the Mac forums, was to 'sleep' the machine rather than powering down. This was a limited success but it sometimes still shut down and restarted several times, especially when the temperature got below about 5 degrees.
Now my Mac is located in an unheated room [actually a shed or den if your in the US] and it gets pretty cold out there during the late autumn and winter which is when the problem mostly occurs. One solution would have been to keep the room heated, which seemed a bit like overkill for the amount of daytime I actually spent in there.
I then bought a 2 foot tubular [sometimes called greenhouse] heater for about £30. They are cheaper from Ebay but I was in a hurry by now. I placed it at the side of my Mac hoping that this would be the ultimate solution. Once again it was a limited success but still didn't deliver the instant start up every time [with or without 'sleep' mode in operation].
I realised that little of the heat [the heater is rated at 120 watts] was actually affecting the Macs temperature. I then decided to build a box with inlet and outlet holes, to contain the heater and put it underneath the Mac. I of course, first checked the heater was suitable for being contained in a box and sure enough, they are apparently often enclosed like this anyway. There are minimum clearance dimensions supplied with the heater to ensure that it doesn't overheat. It also has a thermal trip, just in case.
With the Mac installed on top of the box I rebooted, put the computer to 'sleep' and left it overnight. It just happened that on that particular night we experienced a temperature of minus 8 degrees which is pretty cold for the English midlands. The actual room temperature in my shed was minus 4, so after checking that the bottom of the Mac was nicely warm, I apprehensively clicked the mouse and waited for the inevitable crash. Well it didn't and much to even my surprise, it didn't have to restart several times the following very cold morning when I restarted the machine from scratch. It's almost four weeks now since I first installed my hi-tech Mac Blanket and it hasn't performed an unexpected restart since.
I realise that there may be some warnings forthcoming about overheating etc., but the bottom of the Mac is only just warm so I'm happy to continue with the experiment until the spring.
Hope this helps if anyone is still struggling with a cold starting Mac.
