What to do when your Mac won't boot into normal mode?

[Radium_Angel]

So someone gave me a rather old (but heavily upgraded) 2009 Mac Pro 4,1. Said it didn't work. I cleaned it out and checked the specs

From what I could tell it's got 64GB RAM, 1 2TB Seagate, a 1TB Seagate and a 250GB Hitachi. Also the 1GB ATI Card (with twin 6-pin power connectors)

It'll power up, and make the happy Mac chime noise, but the progress bar inches its way across the screen. 10 minutes later it reaches the very end and the Mac Pro shuts off.

I assume it's a bad hard drive, so I"m checking them under a USB drive dock in Windows, using Disk Genius (it does a sector by sector examination of the drive)

I started with the 250GB, figuring it's the bad one, but so far, it seems to be good. So assuming that drive is okay, I can pull the other ones out and re-install OS X onto it....if I can figure out how to do that.

Here's where I need some guidance...where do I get OS X (errr...10.11 was the last/latest this Mac will support) and can I use Rufus (under Windows) to prep a USB stick...or is there something else I need to do/use?

 

Once I can get into the system, I can test the rest of the tower and go from there. 

[Slottr]

To my knowledge this model wouldnt have a recovery mode, so you'd likely need to track down another mac to create another form of legitimate bootable media

[Crunchy Dragon]

9 minutes ago, Slottr said:

you'd likely need to track down another mac to create another form of legitimate bootable media

This is typically the answer with the older Macs. Kind of annoying, but it's honestly half the reason I kept my iMac around as long as I did.

 

It's not until buying a MacBook that I realized I have no idea what the password for my iMac is anymore

[Radium_Angel]

10 minutes ago, Slottr said:

To my knowledge this model wouldnt have a recovery mode, so you'd likely need to track down another mac to create another form of legitimate bootable media

As it so happens, I have a Mac Pro 2013 running Monterey...so...can you point me to what I need to do next (I'm rather quite new to Macs)

[Crunchy Dragon]

6 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

As it so happens, I have a Mac Pro 2013 running Monterey...so...can you point me to what I need to do next (I'm rather quite new to Macs)

Apple has this support page featuring how to make a bootable installer: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

 

Seems pretty easy, it's mostly all done in Terminal outside of having the USB drive and formatting it.

Spoiler

I already know people are gonna try to get me on the whole piracy/Hackintosh thing, but since we're talking explicitly about Apple products(making a macOS installer from one Mac to install macOS on another Mac), I'm fine saying all of this.

 

[Radium_Angel]

10 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Apple has this support page featuring how to make a bootable installer: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

 

Seems pretty easy, it's mostly all done in Terminal outside of having the USB drive and formatting it.

  Hide contents

I already know people are gonna try to get me on the whole piracy/Hackintosh thing, but since we're talking explicitly about Apple products(making a macOS installer from one Mac to install macOS on another Mac), I'm fine saying all of this.

 

Thank you.

[Crunchy Dragon]

12 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Thank you.

No problem!

Good luck with the restore, those 2009-2013 Mac Pros are some of my favorite Macs to ever exist. Still want to get one for myself.

 

I don't have a ton of experience with Macs myself, but I modded and upgraded the iMac my relatives gave me a few years ago, which was a really fun project. Used it for a while until I couldn't solve the speaker hiss that plagues that era of iMac(2010), and it's been sitting in my closet ever since.

 

I'll likely pull it out again to disconnect the speaker from the motherboard and use it as a monitor for my new(to me) MacBook Pro.

[Radium_Angel]

5 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

No problem!

Good luck with the restore, those 2009-2013 Mac Pros are some of my favorite Macs to ever exist. Still want to get one for myself.

 

I don't have a ton of experience with Macs myself, but I modded and upgraded the iMac my relatives gave me a few years ago, which was a really fun project. Used it for a while until I couldn't solve the speaker hiss that plagues that era of iMac(2010), and it's been sitting in my closet ever since.

 

I'll likely pull it out again to disconnect the speaker from the motherboard and use it as a monitor for my new(to me) MacBook Pro.

If I am unsatisfied with this one...I'll make you a good offer on it!

[Radium_Angel]

@Crunchy Dragon

 

While I am bothering you...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

 

This is the page on how to download the proper OS X.

The Mac Pro can support a max of El Capitan.

 

I don't understand step 3:

1. Type or paste one of the commands below into Terminal, then press Return to enter the command. Each command assumes that the installer is in your Applications folder, and MyVolume is the name of the USB flash drive or other volume you're using. If the volume has a different name, replace MyVolume in the command with the name of your volume.

When they say "installer is in your Applications folder" do they mean the OS X .dmg file?

In addition, my "main" Mac Pro is a 2013 running Monterey, but the target Mac is only good to El Capitan. So do I use the instructions for Monterey or El Capitan? I've re-read it a dozen times and it's still no clearer to me...

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

@Crunchy Dragon

 

While I am bothering you...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

 

This is the page on how to download the proper OS X.

The Mac Pro can support a max of El Capitan.

 

I don't understand step 3:

1. Type or paste one of the commands below into Terminal, then press Return to enter the command. Each command assumes that the installer is in your Applications folder, and MyVolume is the name of the USB flash drive or other volume you're using. If the volume has a different name, replace MyVolume in the command with the name of your volume.

When they say "installer is in your Applications folder" do they mean the OS X .dmg file?

In addition, my "main" Mac Pro is a 2013 running Monterey, but the target Mac is only good to El Capitan. So do I use the instructions for Monterey or El Capitan? I've re-read it a dozen times and it's still no clearer to me...

It seems to me that you need to download the installer, then use Terminal commands to do basically the job of Rufus.

So you download the El Capitan installer and follow the instructions for El Capitan, per the "Depending on which macOS you downloaded..." subtitle under Commands.

 

Version of the machine you're using to download the installer and make the bootable media with shouldn't matter.

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

It seems to me that you need to download the installer, then use Terminal commands to do basically the job of Rufus.

So you download the El Capitan installer and follow the instructions for El Capitan, per the "Depending on which macOS you downloaded..." subtitle under Commands.

 

Version of the machine you're using to download the installer and make the bootable media with shouldn't matter.

Ok, I keep getting the error message "command not found" after it asks for my password.

I thought that the name of the El Capitan file "InstallMacOSX.dmg" was incorrect, so I held my breathe and "opened" it up, and extracted the "InstallMacOSX.pkg" file to the Applications folder, and re-ran the command and still got "command not found"

 

Any ideas?

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, Radium_Angel said:

Ok, I keep getting the error message "command not found" after it asks for my password.

I thought that the name of the El Capitan file "InstallMacOSX.dmg" was incorrect, so I held my breathe and "opened" it up, and extracted the "InstallMacOSX.pkg" file to the Applications folder, and re-ran the command and still got "command not found"

 

Any ideas?

Unfortunately not.

 

It's been years since I needed to create a bootable OSX installer, and it worked the first time for me

Other folks here, or elsewhere on the internet might have a solution for you though.

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Unfortunately not.

 

It's been years since I needed to create a bootable OSX installer, and it worked the first time for me

Other folks here, or elsewhere on the internet might have a solution for you though.

No worries, I've not solved the problem, but I understand what's what. 

As it stands, there is a restore command on this Mac, so I'm going that route.

 

Thank you for all your help

[Crunchy Dragon]

10 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

No worries, I've not solved the problem, but I understand what's what. 

As it stands, there is a restore command on this Mac, so I'm going that route.

 

Thank you for all your help

Glad you could figure it out!

 

Best of luck