Resolved Boot Loop Pimped Mac Pro 1.1

[Ryoma Getter1]

hey guys, long time lurker, first time poster here :

I need some help, My boss kidnly asked me if I "could bring some life to his old mac pro 1.1" with some effort and lots of reading I managed to change both cpu for quadcore' 3.0Ghz which pretty much doubled its multicore geekbench score, installed 32GB of ram, added a sata SSD and a radeon 280X, managed to build and install patched boot.efi version of El Capitan, and ran the scripts to protect it in case of "updates"

Computer has worked fine for over a month, but last night, the boss did "something" and the computer is stuck on a boot loop, in where the chime would sound and then it would reboot, i've already discarded ram issues or video card issues. as i managed to boot into recovery mode.

I'm hoping its a corrupted boot.efi thats acting up, since the other options could mean a fried SMC chip, from what ive gathered.

could you help me a bit?
any way to fix the boot.efi from recovery mode? try to use target boot ?

should i just try to backup the HD and try a fresh install ? thats a bit complicated should i just build a new capitan installer and try to reinstall over the old HD? will that delete his user data?

i'd like to not have to reinstall all the software and have to recover all his stuff again

 

[vworks]

Unfortunately he applied the security update january 2018 and this broke the patch.
You should reinstall the system and reimport the data via the migration assistant.
And do not apply the security update - it does not concern the mac pro 1.1 and 2.1.

 

[Morpheo]

hey guys, long time lurker, first time poster here :

I need some help, My boss kidnly asked me if I "could bring some life to his old mac pro 1.1" with some effort and lots of reading I managed to change both cpu for quadcore' 3.0Ghz which pretty much doubled its multicore geekbench score, installed 32GB of ram, added a sata SSD and a radeon 280X, managed to build and install patched boot.efi version of El Capitan, and ran the scripts to protect it in case of "updates"

Computer has worked fine for over a month, but last night, the boss did "something" and the computer is stuck on a boot loop, in where the chime would sound and then it would reboot, i've already discarded ram issues or video card issues. as i managed to boot into recovery mode.

I'm hoping its a corrupted boot.efi thats acting up, since the other options could mean a fried SMC chip, from what ive gathered.

could you help me a bit?
any way to fix the boot.efi from recovery mode? try to use target boot ?

should i just try to backup the HD and try a fresh install ? thats a bit complicated should i just build a new capitan installer and try to reinstall over the old HD? will that delete his user data?

i'd like to not have to reinstall all the software and have to recover all his stuff again

What the boss did was installing the latest security update

There are ways to get your system back up and running, don't worry your Mac is still fine: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-el-capitan.1890435/page-157

Start at post #3902...

Basically you can either:
- do a complete reinstall
- restore from a TM backup
- take your HD to another mac, clean install El Cap, change the boot.efi etc like you did the first time
- replace the kernel with the older one (not recommended)
- what murnau said about the migration assistant

.- AVOID the 2018-001 security update on this mac (hide it from the App Store so nobody will install it accidentally in the future)

 

[Ryoma Getter1]

i see ... i thought he had done so... i actually disabled security and os updates, seems like apple overwrote those settings, i didn't expect specter and meltdown patch for el capitan .. i'll try taking the HD and making a backup of his user data ... i'm not happy about this

 

[vworks]

If you have a time machine, it's the best.
If you have a recovery partition, you dont need to recover the user data, but for secure reasons I would back up the important files.

 

[Ryoma Getter1]

i don't have a time machine nor a firewire enabled mac to use in target mode, does the system image option from the recovery partition work with data migration on a new system ?

 

[vworks]

I do not really understand the "system image" term in this case but -
you start with the recovery partition, you reinstall EL Capitan and that is all.

 

[Ryoma Getter1]

thanks everyone... computer is booting up again, to make it clear in case future people arrive here by google.
1) RE downloaded El Capitan on another mac,
2( reapplied Pikify 3.1 V14 to it, into an USB
3) then just ran the install again without formating the SSD
4) reapplied boot64 just in case,
5)Disabled all kinds of autoupdates and hid security "fix"

Considering my boss doesnt even use a password, i'm sure he is not worried about some chinese hacker dumping his secret kernel :-D

 

[SamirPD]

Glad you've got this fixed. And now that you've got a working drive image, I'd use clonezilla to save an image of the drive somewhere so if it happens again, you can just re-image the drive and reboot and be back in business.

 

[Ryoma Getter1]

Glad you've got this fixed. And now that you've got a working drive image, I'd use clonezilla to save an image of the drive somewhere so if it happens again, you can just re-image the drive and reboot and be back in business.

good idea hadnt occurred to me

 

[SamirPD]

I found this to be the cheapest and quickest way to have a working copy of a drive in case of drive failure, etc. And it's pretty fast with locally attached drives, and still tolerable over local networks. I've actually even used it across a wan link between states and while it was slow, it allowed rebuilding a drive right there in the field and the system was up in running in hours vs a day or so. We even use this method now to archive proprietary drives that have potentially needed data (like old point-of-sale systems, etc.).

 

[Ryoma Getter1]

Hello, sorry to revive this old thread, instead of creating a new one, but most of the important data is here, the computer worked flawlessly after the last time i posted, i even made the mirror of the drive in case it failed again, which it did last week after about 6 month of going strong, MY boss tells me the computer wont boot, I go with the drive image and the installation usb just in case, but after a Pram reset the computer boots up fine, he excuses himself and starts using the computer, after about 15 minutes the computer freezes and shuts down no reboot i reset the pram without luck and the smc, at which point the computer comes back to life.
Then it shuts again, and now the computer wont chime, or anything just gives me CPU A CPU B FAIL leds on, tried removing the ATI videocard and tried a few combinations of removing ram risers and dimms without luck i do get trickle power when pressing the diag led. could this be the CPUS failed? any ideas, what makes me believe in a hardware failure was the fact the computer was working and failed suddenly, so i don't think its a firmware or patch mishap, unless resetting some SMC or removing the battery could reset the patch that makes these cpu work.

any ideas are welcome, i think this baby is done

 

[vworks]

Hardware probably...
The best is to test the same drive in another mac pro 1.1

 

[Ryoma Getter1]

Hardware probably...
The best is to test the same drive in another mac pro 1.1

thanks, sadly thats not an option, I'll probably tellhim its dead and he needs to buy a new machine

 

[vworks]

Or test the same mac pro with installing Lion for instance or Snow Leopard on a HDD... see what happens.

 

[Ryoma Getter1]

yeah problem is the computer wont boot at all

 

[vworks]

Oook.
Then try to boot from an external drive. If it boots, then it is software probably.
This happened to me recently, a friend of mine was unable to boot on mac pro 1.1 and I found out he messed up with time machine...

 

[Ryoma Getter1]

Oook.
Then try to boot from an external drive. If it boots, then it is software probably.
This happened to me recently, a friend of mine was unable to boot on mac pro 1.1 and I found out he messed up with time machine...

yeah no such luck i don't even get the chime at all, i cant access anything the problem is higher in level... i created another thread to avoid further confusion

 

[vworks]

I got it. :/
You tried removing Ram etc...
Maybe it's the processors but seems highly unlikely. The best is to get a new machine (they are very cheap now) and to transfer the disks...