RE: Mac Pro Help?

[wrathy]

Hi Motunation.
Wow its been a really long time since I've been on here......
In any event, I was doing some basic audio editing in DP, and suddenly things went haywire on me. The machine is incredibly slow, tons of spinning beach balls, just booting up takes forever.
What I have tried so far:
Repair Permissions
Reset PRam
Trashing DP Pref's
Trashing the Project I was working on (it was so early in the process that I wasn't concerned with starting over)
The System HD has plenty of space (around 10-15 G on a 250G drive)

Two symptoms that maybe are clues to what's going on:
1) DP will not boot, citing MacOS error -192 resource not found
2) After the computer boots up, if I open the activity monitor, over 9G of memory is wired. I can't see what's taking up all that memory right after boot up. Its as if there is some task the computer is working on that is in some endless loop.

If you have any suggestions, I would welcome your input.

Please don't mock my antiquated rig: its stable, works and I got tired of the "update game." I also don't do much commercial music anymore, so the need to stay totally current wasn't totally justified.


THANKS!!!!

[HCMarkus]

Do you have another drive you can boot from? Starting from a known good alternate to your "daily use" boot drive can allow you to quickly confirm if the issue is either

1. software/daily use boot drive issue, or
2. hardware other than boot drive

The sudden then continuing failure has me thinking hardware... drive or RAM failure maybe? If you have your original system CD, you can try starting up from that.

Hopefully Mike Halloran will weigh in on this with some advice.

[mikehalloran]

Hi Motunation.
....

The System HD has plenty of space (around 10-15 G on a 250G drive)

No, not even close. 38G (15%) left is cause for concern. 5–7% is ridiculously low. Most of us get very concerned when it's 20% free space left (50G in your case).
....

Two symptoms that maybe are clues to what's going on:
1) DP will not boot, citing MacOS error -192 resource not found...

Another clue.

...its stable, works...

Really?

I could give you a list of things to test but I'm not going to waste your time nor the key strokes.

Replace the hard drive with something newer and much larger. Hopefully you have a recent Time Machine backup to restore everything from. If not, be prepared to not be able to recover everything but you might get lucky. NO MATTER WHAT, DO NOT CLONE THIS DRIVE TO THE NEW ONE. Use Migration Assistant or Time Machine restore—Time Machine is preferred here.

If you want to make a big speed increase, upgrade to an SSD instead of a mechanical HD. If not on Yosemite 10.4 or later, go to http://www.cindori.org and download the version of Trim Enabler that matches your OS and run it.

If not, get at least a WD Caviar Blue that runs 7200 rpm or a Caviar Black.

While you are at it, if the CR2032 battery hasn't been replaced in the last three years, replace it at the same time.

[wrathy]

Thanks Mike and HC.

I will look into getting a new Drive. I have do have backups, but this might be the time to start over from scratch.
I did test my RAM and it seems fine.
I still suspect that there is something amiss w/ this large amount of wired memory right after booting up. Trying to figure out why.
All the best.

[mikehalloran]

Thanks Mike and HC.

I will look into getting a new Drive...

As long as you replace it. Mechanical drives require a minimum of 15% free space to work efficiently. SSDs require 7–20% depending on the NAND.
.

I still suspect that there is something amiss w/ this large amount of wired memory right after booting up. Trying to figure out why...

A bad battery will cause this. I see that you have two Mac Pros. Replace the battery in both. The ubiquitous CR2032 battery from your hardware or drug store is fine and will last 5 years. The OE is a BR2032 but that is only required in Macs with high internal heat issues—the Mac Pro tower is not one of them.

As long as you are going to be examining your MP, how long has it been since you have cleaned the heat sinks over the CPUs? These clog up and that can cause all sorts of problems.

http://securityspread.com/2013/05/31/computer-killers/

[wrathy]

THANKS MIKE.

Appreciate all the feedback!

Got everything off the old drive, then used Time Machine to get the new drive going, then updated the OS.

My two CPU's are really clean. Even opening them up over the last 2 days, there is very little dust in there. But since I had them open, blew them out and made sure they were still good to go...

All the best.