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Can you boot into the equivilent of macs safe mode, and did you notice any weirdness with the display when it forces a reset?
 
I have booted into the safe mode, but I think it keeps doing it. Sometimes it displays a grey box with a message in multiple languages.
You can try resetting the SMC, which would seem a more likely culprit than the PRAM, and if youre mac pro has on board graphics, installing gswitch and using the mobo/inbuilt GPU, instead of the external one might yield results. I know apple had a lot of gpu troubles between 2011-2012, although based on what you describe this scenario seems less likely
 
You can try resetting the SMC, which would seem a more likely culprit than the PRAM, and if youre mac pro has on board graphics, installing gswitch and using the mobo/inbuilt GPU, instead of the external one might yield results. I know apple had a lot of gpu troubles between 2011-2012, although based on what you describe this scenario seems less likely
Thanks for the response. I switch off the mains socket to the the mac pro when not in use, which from the following instructions seems to mean I am resetting the SMC everytime it's not being used.
If you have an iMac, a Mac Mini, or a Mac Pro, resetting the SMC is dead simple:
  1. Shut down your Mac, then unplug the power cable.
  2. Wait 15 seconds.
  3. Plug the power cord back in, then turn on your Mac.
 
Thanks for the response. I switch off the mains socket to the the mac pro when not in use, which from the following instructions seems to mean I am resetting the SMC everytime it's not being used.
Ahh of course, I forgot that era of mac pro is reset by disconnecting it from power. Barring that, when I have encountered this, a fresh install has usually set things straight from what I can remember. If your files are all backed up, thats what I would recommend
 
All my data is on a seperate ssd. Unfortunately a friend installed the whole system for me at a film studio I was working at in January so I don't have access to the installation files. I had to install quite an old OS because I am still on PT11/
 
All my data is on a seperate ssd. Unfortunately a friend installed the whole system for me at a film studio I was working at in January so I don't have access to the installation files. I had to install quite an old OS because I am still on PT11/
that era of mac shipped with mountain lion iirc, which should be downloadable through here: Mac OS X Mountain Lion Installer

That might get you straight!
 
You probably know this already Rob but, one area that Mac is ahead of PC in terms of performing a clean install is, there's no need to worry about having physical install discs etc. in hand, O.S. is downloadable from Apple. Download it via another comp. to a usb thumb drive if it's not possible to download directly to the Mac Pro.

Thus ends my Mac Pro knowledge. Anyway, it's probably worth persevering with it until it caves and you win, congrats (y)
 
That's a tad on the old side but if you put a solid state drive in it and bump up the ram it would be usable. A 500G SSD and 8G RAM for that machine is probably not that bad. Then find out which OS version is the latest you can run on it and install it fresh. Looks like Catalina or definitely High Sierra. With an SSD and RAM, it would definitely be usable.
 
That's a tad on the old side but if you put a solid state drive in it and bump up the ram it would be usable. A 500G SSD and 8G RAM for that machine is probably not that bad. Then find out which OS version is the latest you can run on it and install it fresh. Looks like Catalina or definitely High Sierra. With an SSD and RAM, it would definitely be usable.
It already has 2 ssd's. A 256GB for system & 1TB for data. It also has 16gb of RAM. I can't install anything higher than yosemite because I only have a licence for PT11 & as I said above that is the latest OS that will work. I don't really need a high powered machine because I only use it as a tape deck as I have a lot of hardware.
 
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You probably know this already Rob but, one area that Mac is ahead of PC in terms of performing a clean install is, there's no need to worry about having physical install discs etc. in hand, O.S. is downloadable from Apple. Download it via another comp. to a usb thumb drive if it's not possible to download directly to the Mac Pro.

Thus ends my Mac Pro knowledge. Anyway, it's probably worth persevering with it until it caves and you win, congrats (y)
Thanks John. I didn't know that. I am a MAC numpty !
 
Thanks John. I didn't know that. I am a MAC numpty !
Well, now that I told you that, you know as much or more than I do :sneaky:

Plenty of Pro studios still running cheese grater 2012 Mac Pro's, and as a mere tape recorder without needing Thunderbolt and tons of plug-ins, it's more than fine.
 
Sometimes those random reboots are due to temperature. And possibly the graphics card or memory failure. Something that could help is to open it up use a can of compressed air and blow the dust out of the fans and re sit all the cards (graphics and memory ). Then after restart do about this mac and check that the memory is good.
 
It already has 2 ssd's. A 256GB for system & 1TB for data. It also has 16gb of RAM. I can't install anything higher than yosemite because I only have a licence for PT11 & as I said above that is the latest OS that will work. I don't really need a high powered machine because I only use it as a tape deck as I have a lot of hardware.
Understood. Well that's a fine machine then. Very usable if you can get it working properly.

I don't have deep mac specific knowledge but I would definitely reset / change everything as much as possible. Specifically, I would remove the data SSD and if the RAM is more than one module, remove all but the first one and maybe even take the first one out and replace it with one of the others. While your in there, disconnect an re-seat all connectors carefully. Verify that cables are not strung around in goofy ways. Locate the the one SSD close to the controller and use the shortest drive cable or shortest section of drive cable. Clean it out like ubxf said.

Then put Yosemite on a thumb drive and reinstall the os. Then re-evaluate.
 
Thanks for the advice fellas. I will try reseating everything tomorrow.

It's probably worth saying I did have a graphics problem before. I was given a cinema display with it which never worked properly. The colours were psychedelic making any information impossible to read. Weirdly the monitor was ok on my pc laptop. Eventually the mac pro stopped working graphics wise, but fortunately another friend happened to have exactly the same graphics card that he gave me. The graphics work again but not with the cinema display.
 
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