[macgeek2005]

It's dead. It's simply dead. When I start it up, I get the "ching" noise, and then I hear a click and it shuts down.

I was away from my computer for like 20 minutes and when I came back the computer was DEAD silent, but the light wasn't pusling. It wasn't asleep. It was dead!

I forced it to "shut down" by holding down the power button, and when I started it up, it made the ching noise, and then shut down.

I have:

Reseated the ram.

Tried to boot up without the lower two ram chips.

Reseated the hard drives.

Tried to boot up with one or the other hard drives out. It's not due to a bad hard drive.

I've also tried different electircal outlets......

What do I do???? I'm currently waiting on the phone with apple......... MAN it's a long wait.

I'm gonna make them send me a brand new one, and just take this one back. I'm not getting a one day old computer repaird! I'm telling them that i'm keeping the hard drives since they have my stuff on them, and that i'm sending back everything else in trade for a brand new one.

[Cadaver]

While agree that you should be entitled to a replacement, I think you may have a hard time convincing them to replace the machine without the original hard drive(s). Plus, you never know if it was the hard drive itself that caused the machine to fail. I say let them replace the whole thing.

[Yakov]

you're entitled to a return. do it

[Hydra]

Did you add the extra 1GB of RAM? You may want to try pulling some DIMMS and seeing if it starts without it.

-Jerry C.

[Hydra]

Also on page 115 of the service manual for the MP shows the diagnostic LEDs on the MB to help diagnose problems.

-Jerry C.

[macgeek2005]

I tried booting up with just 1GB of ram, and the same thing happened. This is not an issue that really has anything to do with anything. It just shuts off. Something turns it off....

Anyway, apple is replacing it. They said i'll recieve an email within 48 hours with instructions, and that as soon as they recieve the info from FedEx that I shipped it, they start building my new one, and it is prioritized throughout the entire process, and shipped with priority overnight.... Not bad!

The other great thing that's keeping me calm about it is the fact that my startup disk is a Seagate drive that I bought from newegg! I get to keep that!

When my new Mac Pro arrives, I just stick it in and BOOM, i'm on my old computer but WITHOUT problems! LOL. My whole iTunes library, iPhoto library, even desktop pattern!!! They'll all be there for me!

Anyway yeah... in the meantime i'll enjoy some time outdoors... or on my iBook...

[derekn]

Well at least that's been resolved how it should be.

[Big Mac]

You did the right thing in my view, macgeek. Apple usually strongly pushes AppleCare repairs on brand new machines, which is just unacceptable in my view. A brand new machine shouldn't be repaired, it should be replaced and then Apple should refurbish it and resell it, if appropriate. Congrats on getting them to do what was proper.

[macgeek2005]

I don't think they even mentioned repairing it. They gave me two options on how to get it replaced. In one of the ways, they'd start building my new machine once they got mine, and in the other way they start building it as soon as mine ships!

I asked them if theres any disadvantages to doing it the faster way, and they said no. So I chose that.

I just finished packing up the computer, and am now back on my iBook. I only lost 3.5 GB of stuff, which was on the 160GB drive in there, but it's not a big deal......

I think that this sudden death explains alot of things. For one, the ram in my machine would get used up WAY too fast. I'd have like 2 programs open, and 80mb of free ram...

Also, the machine wasn't as quiet as i've read... and it wasn't quite as fast as I thought it'd be.... Maybe it's all connected somehow.

Is this the first DOA Mac Pro ever reported on the forums so far? That's an honorary position to be in!

[derekn]

I've read of a few DOA MacPros, they didn't even startup once and had to be replaced. Reseating the RAM riser cards didn't do anything.

I do wonder what the failure rate is though, those are only the ones that have been posted online.

[macgeek2005]

Hmm.. well now I can only hope that they build my second one properly. Meaning, put the right stuff in it. They might accidentaly not give me 2 superdrives, or not give me the 3.0ghz CPU.......

[himself]

I assume that the MacPros come with a hardware diagnostic CD/DVD (I don't know what they're shipping with these newfangled Intel Macs these days)... did you try booting up from that?

[macgeek2005]

Maybe I didn't make myself clear....

It's not a compatibility problem. It's a physical problem. There is a physical defect somewhere in the machine that goes *click* ZZZzzzzzzzzz............ within five seconds of starting up.

Yes, I have tried booting up on a CD. The computer has NO PROBLEMS! It would read that CD as good as can be, except that somethings shuts it down before it can!

[hldan]

Originally Posted by macgeek2005

I tried booting up with just 1GB of ram, and the same thing happened. This is not an issue that really has anything to do with anything. It just shuts off. Something turns it off....

The other great thing that's keeping me calm about it is the fact that my startup disk is a Seagate drive that I bought from newegg! I get to keep that!

When my new Mac Pro arrives, I just stick it in and BOOM, i'm on my old computer but WITHOUT problems! LOL. My whole iTunes library, iPhoto library, even desktop pattern!!! They'll all be there for me!

Anyway yeah... in the meantime i'll enjoy some time outdoors... or on my iBook...

Did Apple actually confirm with you that it was definitely NOT your Hardrive causing the problem? I'm saying this because you are so sure of yourself that everything will be okay once you pop in your New Egg hardrive and no problems. I hope for your sake it's not the New Egg hardrive.
Keep us posted.

[macgeek2005]

I tried booting it up without that drive in it. It definetaly has nothing to do with it. The click sound is not a hard drive. It comes from above, like around the power supply I think. In fact, one of the times that I booted it up, It got a little bit further and showed the apple on the screen, but then it shut down. That proves the hard drive is fine. It was booting up just fine.

I ordered 2 Seagate drives and the other one did die. I'm getting that replaced from newegg.....But this one was fine...

[Oversoul]

Macgeek, sorry to hear about your new Mac Pro.

I have to agree with hldan though. The click you heard just before the shutdown could very well be from your newegg HDD. I suppose you'll find out when you pop that hard drive into your replacement machine.

Edit: Nevermind.

[hldan]

Yeah Macgeek, I meant to explain myself a little more. If your Mac Pro turns on it's not technically dead. So what happens when you turn on the computer (as I'm sure you know) the computer first turns on and assesses the bios and then speaks to the HDD to begin booting up the OS. If it fails to continue then either the computer is having the problem or it's the HDD that has the problem. The startup chime is not just there for kicks it's a confirmation that the computer is capable of starting up but I'm no expert so let us know how things work out.

[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by hldan

Yeah Macgeek, I meant to explain myself a little more. If your Mac Pro turns on it's not technically dead. So what happens when you turn on the computer (as I'm sure you know) the computer first turns on and assesses the bios and then speaks to the HDD to begin booting up the OS. If it fails to continue then either the computer is having the problem or it's the HDD that has the problem. The startup chime is not just there for kicks it's a confirmation that the computer is capable of starting up but I'm no expert so let us know how things work out.

Well it was a brand new 320GB 7200.10 Seagate Barracuda. Disk Utility reported no problems, and the computer was running just fine! Give me one reason how the hard drive could've been the problem.

The 160GB drive that came in the computer was a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9. However, now that I think about it, when I started up the computer with NO hard drive in it at all, I didn't hear a click sound before it shut off, but it still shut off.

It makes perfect sense. Whatever it was that causes it to shut down is NOT the hard drive, however when it forces the computer to shut down, it forces the hard drive to stop spinning, and it makes the click sound. Whether it was the 160GB drive or the 320GB drive that was in there during bootup, it would make the same click noise and then shut down, even though the 160GB didn't even have an OS on it. Then when neither was in, it would shut down without the click noise.

DEFINETALY another cause!

[hldan]

Originally Posted by macgeek2005

Well it was a brand new 320GB 7200.10 Seagate Barracuda. Disk Utility reported no problems, and the computer was running just fine! Give me one reason how the hard drive could've been the problem.



DEFINETALY another cause!

Well I hope it's just the easy for you because I know it can be headache when lose all your info due to a faulty HDD, I know from experience. But as I mentioned I am no expert but it's always a great idea to do a back up of your important data just in case. But since you mentioned it, I will give you one more reason how it could be the hard drive, You mentioned the hard drive was brand new well so was the computer, it could be either one of them. Second reason why, you said that one of your hard drives from New Egg was bad.

What I have noticed with many people is that when the computer starts acting up the hard drive receives the least amount of blame and nobody backs up their stuff as if the HDD is indestructable.

[macgeek2005]

Alright look. All I know is that my HDD was not the cause..... I know. I've explained why, if you happened to read everything I wrote. You'll see, when my new Mac Pro comes....

[kick52]

its most definatly the PSU blown, I dont think a HD would do that.

[Big Mac]

I agree, a bad drive would not cause a system to fail to boot completely. Bad RAM, yes. Not a bad drive.

[jamil5454]

I'd have to say it's a bad PSU.

[kick52]

to test if its the RAM and not the PSU, take out all RAM and see if it starts up (it should make a beeping noise, and not startup, but at least you know the PSU is okay.

[macgeek2005]

Without the ram at all, the computer did exactly the same thing as it did with the ram. No beeping. Just a click and it shut off...

However, you know those lights above the ram place? I think they're diogonstic light or something. It appears that they signify riser A and riser B because theres 4 lights, and two of them say A and B, and the other two say A and B as well.

When the computer shuts off, the first two lights go red......

Glad to hear some opinions backing me up on that it is not my brand new 320GB hard drive that was causing the problem.

[Hydra]

Actually I think the first 2 diagnostic lights on the MB signify failure of CPU1/CPU2. In any event it it better to get a new one and forget the old one

-Jerry C.

[macgeek2005]

Well faliure of CPU 1 & 2 would definetly account for all the problems.

It would also explain why the computer made a bit more noise that I had expected, and why it wasn't quite as fast. It might also explain random applications quitting on me, and the audio jacks being kind of voodoo. And on top of that, it might also explain why the computer turns on by itself when it's plugged in... and the list goes on and on.

Edit: When I take both ram riser cards out and boot it up, it stayes on for a few seconds longer than when they're in, then the power light flashes on and off a few times, and then the machine shuts down, I get the 2 red lights, but the power light goes off completely. When the ram is in, the light stayes on even after it shuts down.....

[taogo]

I just got my Mac Pro yesterday. It started but keep shut down itself. Today I talked with some technicians of Apple Care.

It seems there is three levels of response from Apple:

First level: those people absolutely know minumum. Only Ask me to push the reset botton.
Teh machine still shut itself down.
Second Level. so-called product specialist. ask me whether the two LED were on. I said so. She told me
she will work with the engineers of Apple to see how to proceed: whether they like to see the machine back so they can work on it. BTW, the two LED seems indicate both CPU A and B were failing. I must wait until next Monday or Tuesday for further information.
The third level: apple engineers (jerks since they can NOT get the basic right). I do not trust them now.

This is the first Mac I ever have. I just bought A dell precision 490N with similar configuration as the
Mac Pro and everything works fine and it is very fast, very quiet too. I think If I can return it I will and
just spend a few hundreds more to get a DELL.

Originally Posted by Hydra

Actually I think the first 2 diagnostic lights on the MB signify failure of CPU1/CPU2. In any event it it better to get a new one and forget the old one

-Jerry C.

[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by taogo

I just got my Mac Pro yesterday. It started but keep shut down itself. Today I talked with some technicians of Apple Care.

It seems there is three levels of response from Apple:

First level: those people absolutely know minumum. Only Ask me to push the reset botton.
Teh machine still shut itself down.
Second Level. so-called product specialist. ask me whether the two LED were on. I said so. She told me
she will work with the engineers of Apple to see how to proceed: whether they like to see the machine back so they can work on it. BTW, the two LED seems indicate both CPU A and B were failing. I must wait until next Monday or Tuesday for further information.
The third level: apple engineers (jerks since they can NOT get the basic right). I do not trust them now.

This is the first Mac I ever have. I just bought A dell precision 490N with similar configuration as the
Mac Pro and everything works fine and it is very fast, very quiet too. I think If I can return it I will and
just spend a few hundreds more to get a DELL.

Wow, I wonder what the failure rate is for Mac Pro's. You got a DOA too...

Does it shut down exactly the same way I described mine shutting down? And did it do it from the very first time you started it up?

[Hydra]

Well I wouldn't read too much into someone who just signed up today to post they had a DOA as well. People who have no problems tend to not bother posting anything. I see many reports all over about Mac Pros but not very many DOA's. They happen to all manufacturers.

-Jerry C.

[taogo]

Yes, pretty much the same,
The very first time it powered up, the Machine shuted it down in a few minutes (after the various welcomes).
I tried several times and the farthest point is: it finishs the boot process and stays up for another one or two minutes. Overall, It varies when it shut down (for more than ten reboots, some was under the instruction
of technicians from Apple).

BTY, yes, people tend not to compain when there is no problems. However, I have owned different computers for many years, most of them are unix workstations (Sun, SGI and IBM) and PCs. None of them are DOA. The first time I bought a Mac and I got a DOA. I really doubt the Apple's quality though I understand that I may be just unlucky!

Originally Posted by macgeek2005

Wow, I wonder what the failure rate is for Mac Pro's. You got a DOA too...

Does it shut down exactly the same way I described mine shutting down? And did it do it from the very first time you started it up?

[macgeek2005]

Well I have to admit, my experience with apple was a very bad one around my whole Mac Pro issue.

I think for the amusment of you guys, i'll briefly sumerize exactly what happened from start to finish. Although since I haven't gotten my replacement Mac Pro yet, It won't quite be finished, but that's OK.

August 7th, 2006: Phil Schiller introduces the Mac Pro.

August 8th - 17th: I figure out what kind of Mac Pro setup I want, and sell my entire G4 computer setup.

August 18th: I order my Mac Pro. Quad 3.0Ghz, 2GB of ram, X1900XT, BT/AP, 2x Superdrives. I get an estimated ship date of September 18th, and an estimated delivery date of September 25th.

August 22nd: My dad decides he wants an iPod, since we get a discount if we buy it with the computer. Unaware that we can simply add an ipod to the order, we cancel it and start over. My ship date is now September 20th, with delivery on the 27th.

August 28th: I decide it would be a good idea to change the hard drive size from 250GB to 160GB because i'd save almost enough money to buy another whole 250GB drive. I call apple. Before I do anything, I confirm that changing the BTO options WILL NOT affect ship date/delivery date. The lady on the phone assures me that my ship date will stay put as September 20th. The change is made. My ship date moves from September 20th to September 26th, and delivery from September 27th to October 3rd.

August 28th cont: Not only that, but my order now has a wireless keyboard and mighty mouse, which I did not order. I call back. The guy apologizes to me and tells me that I was missinformed and that making a change to the order does indeed push back the ship date. He then tells me that he'd rather keep the wireless keyboard and mouse in the order and he won't charge me for them. Very nice. I tell him "I'm the one paying thousands of dollars for this machine, I should get it exactly how I want it, and if making yet another modification to the order pushes back the ship date even further, I should get some sort of compensation". He said "You're absolutely right". He fixed my order and then transfered me to a manager who upgraded me to free overnight shipping.

August 31st: Sick of the long wait and of the delay caused by apple, I decide to **** it and take the X1900XT out of my Mac Pro and order the kit seperatly. A very helpful guy named Eugene did it all for me, and I had a brand new computer under the same order number with a ship date of September 8th with delivery on the 11th.

September 7th: My Mac Pro ships.

September 8th: My Mac Pro is delivered. I put my new hard drives in it, set it all up, turn it on, and begin to have fun.

September 10th: At about 1:30 in the afternoon, my Mac Pro shuts down on it's own. It has not been succesfully turned on since. Everything has been tried. Apple says i'll recieve an email within 48 hours, with instructions and a shipping label to send back the computer.

September 11th: I recieve the RMA email from apple and a shipping label from FedEx. Apple creates a new order for me of the exact same Mac Pro, with an estimated ship date of September 15th, with delivery on the 19th. It's a prepaid order with 2 day shipping, and the order status page says that it'll ship as soon as they recieve the bad one.

September 12th: I send out the bad Mac Pro via FedEx

September 15th: My Mac Pro is delivered to apple at 9:07AM.

September 16th: The Estimated ship date for my new Mac Pro moves from September 15th to September 22nd, and delivery moved from the 19th to the 26th. In case you don't remember, my ORIGINAL ship date/delivery dates for my first order with X1900XT were September 18th and delivery on the 25th.

September 16th cont: I call apple and the apologize for the delay and upgrade me to overnight shipping for free, once again.

This has been by far the worst online buying experience ever!

But I feel SO much better now!!!

[macgeek2005]

Wow, I get up this morning (Sunday) and it's shipped. FedEx tracking says that at 11:10PM the electronic shipping info was recieved, and that it'll be arriving tommorow by 4:30 PM.

I love apple! Your computer dies, and exactly one week later you get a brand new one with the exact same custom configuration.

[houstonmacbro]

Originally Posted by macgeek2005

It's dead. It's simply dead. When I start it up, I get the "ching" noise, and then I hear a click and it shuts down.

I was away from my computer for like 20 minutes and when I came back the computer was DEAD silent, but the light wasn't pusling. It wasn't asleep. It was dead!

I forced it to "shut down" by holding down the power button, and when I started it up, it made the ching noise, and then shut down.

I have:

Reseated the ram.

Tried to boot up without the lower two ram chips.

Reseated the hard drives.

Tried to boot up with one or the other hard drives out. It's not due to a bad hard drive.

I've also tried different electircal outlets......

What do I do???? I'm currently waiting on the phone with apple......... MAN it's a long wait.

I'm gonna make them send me a brand new one, and just take this one back. I'm not getting a one day old computer repaird! I'm telling them that i'm keeping the hard drives since they have my stuff on them, and that i'm sending back everything else in trade for a brand new one.

have there been any lightening strikes in your area? do you have your machine on a dedicated backup or power surge?

i had a machine get blown out by lightening once.

[macgeek2005]

No. No lightning strikes, nothing. No dedicated backup or power surge either.. I don't even know what that is.

[houstonmacbro]

well, i mean battery backup. so in case power dies, the machine has time to power down, instead of just getting cut off.

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by macgeek2005

No. No lightning strikes, nothing. No dedicated backup or power surge either.. I don't even know what that is.

My advice is to always have a high-quality surge protector. It can really save your system. $150 or so is a small investment for a $2500 computer.

[macgeek2005]

Originally Posted by Cadaver

My advice is to always have a high-quality surge protector. It can really save your system. $150 or so is a small investment for a $2500 computer.

But that's not what killed my Mac Pro. And isn't forcing your computer to turn off by holding down the power button the same thing as it being turned off by a power outage? Cause that definetaly doesn't kill computers.

[Big Mac]

No, a forced shut off is not the same as a power surge. At the very least you should have your computer connected to a surge protector. And I concur that with the cheap availability of UPSes it's really a good choice to get one.

[eopaling]

I just read the long thread of reply's to MacGeek's enquiry. My first brand new mac pro just doesn't want to switch on. I connected all the cables after taking it out of the box and what is the result: none. No computer.
It probabaly has to do with the two CPU's as the two red diagnostic LEDs (CPU A and CPU B) are constantly on. So mine didn't even get the chance to be born.
There seem to be many DOA cases with the mac pro's...

What can I do to resolve this problem?

[derekn]

Call Apple right now, your system is dead on arrival, so they should send you a new one.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by eopaling

...There seem to be many DOA cases with the mac pro's...

Like, how many? How many Mac Pros do suppose have shipped? A certain percentage of all shipped high tech hardware is flawed. No big deal, the issue is the quality of free warranty service (no AppleCare needed!) which Apple does reasonably well.

Originally Posted by eopaling

...What can I do to resolve this problem?

Call 1-800-SOS-APPL and work through the repair/return steps or simply return it to where you bought it.

-Allen Wicks

[zaghahzag]

i think the doa's must happen sometime during transit. they must actually turn on a completely built machine and test something, right? it has to be working even a little bit when they ship it, doesn't it?

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by eopaling

There seem to be many DOA cases with the mac pro's...

I'm not sure I'd agree with that statements. There have been some, yes, but you only hear about the problems. People don't post, "My Mac Pro was not DOA."

[Hydra]

DOA is the best possible failure to get if you are going to have a major failure. Just send it back, no real troubleshooting involved or repairs to worry about. I am familiar with about THREE people with DOA's from various sources. Saying "many" is a bit of an overstatement. Two of the posters in this thread alone with major problems have a combined 3 posts. Do they have problems? Most certainly yes. They just further the theory that people who have trouble go looking for ways to fix it and to a certain extent vent their frustrations. This is natural but it doesn't make it a major cause for concern. If there were real problems with the Mac Pro we would be seeing front page news on all types of sites.

My Mac Pro has been in my possession for about 5 weeks now and through installing many types types of RAM in various configurations and stress testing said RAM for hundreds of hours, installing 3 extra hard-dives, installing a 1900XT, installing and running Windows XP Pro with the bootcamp beta, installing the Bluetooth module, hooking up the SATA ports on the motherboard to check out to see if they were compatible with my SATA enclosure with port multiplier (doesn't seem to work btw), many USB and firewire devices plugged into the machine and all the on and off cycles associated with all these hardware installations and all types of usage throughout and not a single KP. Rock solid and so far no complaints.

For the record My Mac Pro was not DOA.

-Jerry C.

[hldan]

I had hoped for MacGeek2005 to reply back to us with his experience. Apple was sending him another MacPro, wondered how that one turned out?

[macgeek2005]

Hey i'm back. My new Mac Pro is great. The only issue I have is tearing in some games with the X1900XT. I don't know whether it should have horizontal tearing or not, because Macintouch said that the 7300GT has tearing even with Vsync turned on, but they hadn't tested the X1900XT.

My X1900XT definetaly shows tearing in Doom 3 and Quake 4 even with Vsync on, and if nobody had told me that it shouldn't be there, it would have made perfect sense, considering that it was there with the 7300GT, and the fact that neither of the two cards are officially supported by those games.

Any input would be appreciated.

[dezign]

You were right to get a new replacement .. some people on the website below are having a hard time with replaced parts ... www[dot]macbookrandomshutdown[dot]com

There seems to be a RandomShutdownSyndrome (RSS) problem with some of the heatsinks ... maybe you can let some of these people know your Mac works okay once it is replaced ...

I want to upgrade my old PowerBook G4 which works great ! but it's a bit scary hearing all these problems ...

[macgeek2005]

If I sound a little bit annoyed in this post, it's probably because I am a little bit annoyed.

For the last 3 days i've been trying to find out about this tearing issue i'm having in Doom 3 and Quake 4. It really doesn't take brain surgery to answer my questions, just a bit of knowledge in the area.

My questions are, 1. Is it known that the X1900XT has the same tearing issues with Doom 3 and Quake 4, as the 7300GT does? I know for a fact that the 7300GT DOES HAVE these problems, but I never read about the X1900XT. If someone can confirm that it does have the problems, then that's all I need to know.

2. If it's not supposed to have the problems, can someone simply tell me what might be the cause, or what I could do?

Thank you!

[Hydra]

Originally Posted by macgeek2005

If I sound a little bit annoyed in this post, it's probably because I am a little bit annoyed.

For the last 3 days i've been trying to find out about this tearing issue i'm having in Doom 3 and Quake 4. It really doesn't take brain surgery to answer my questions, just a bit of knowledge in the area.

My questions are, 1. Is it known that the X1900XT has the same tearing issues with Doom 3 and Quake 4, as the 7300GT does? I know for a fact that the 7300GT DOES HAVE these problems, but I never read about the X1900XT. If someone can confirm that it does have the problems, then that's all I need to know.

2. If it's not supposed to have the problems, can someone simply tell me what might be the cause, or what I could do?

Thank you!

You might want to create a new thread because people with similar problems might bypass this one. As to the tearing issues I think we may need to get 10.4.8 under our belts before anything definitive about graphics issues as the Mac Pro ships with a bit of a frankenstein OpenGL implementation. I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way as if what Apple has in store with multithreaded GL could reap huge performance dividends. I have Doom 3 and Quake 4 on my Mac Pro but have played around with them only a little at this point. I do seem to remember some tearing but nothing horrible whereas UT2k4 and COD2 seem to not have as much.

-Jerry C.