Startup, Restart, Shutdown Problems

[wstrohm]

My Mini-ITX computer has been working well for about 23 months. Recently, it is randomly refusing to start up, i.e. it hangs during the process, always after the Apple progress bar halts and video is lost, sometimes further along like when video comes back on but hangs at a grey screen. The "restart" button on the front panel will usually successfully recycle the startup procedure, but sometimes not. When the display does finally appear, the computer works perfectly. No issues at all.

If Restart is selected from the Apple menu, frequently the same hang as described above occurs, i.e. the "Restart" button on the front panel of the SD101 must be pushed to complete restart. If the restart is originated with the front panel button, the process goes normally.

If Shutdown is selected from the Apple menu, frequently the process hangs after loss of the video signal; i.e. video stays off, but the computer will not power down. When this happens, fan speed increases gradually until I press and hold the power button on the SD101 front panel.

Troubleshooting this issue has produced no change. I have so far done the following (in chronological order):
Re-flashed the BIOS using the same F8 firmware version as used previously.
Re-partitioned my primary SSD, and re-installed Mac OS X 10.10.5 using Unibeast (see below) followed by Multibeast.
Deleted the "EvOreboot.kext" from System/Library/Extensions.

My secondary SSD, which is the destination for Carbon Copy Cloner operations, still has "EvOreboot.kext" installed, but it has the same issues as the primary SSD.

I would appreciate any insights anyone might have to this problem. Of course EVGA claims I need a 400 watt power supply, but I have calculated the power usage of various components in the computer, and cannot find a total exceeding 120 watts. (And there is the fact that the computer has worked since midyear of 2014.)

[Edit: EVGA just confirmed my GT 740 graphics card power requirement:

"The recommendation of the 20A rail is to allow overhead for other parts of the machine to have enough power. If you're using a mini-ITX system, it should be fine. The max that the card can draw is what the PCIe slot is rated for at 12VDC, 75W or 6.2A. If you're able to pull 64W with the card fully loaded, you're coming in 11W under the max that the slot provides, so again, you should be fine.

If the PSU isn't able to keep up with the demand from the system, it will usually simply power off to protect itself and the other components."]


My "Custom Mac" hardware is as follows:
Thermaltake SD101 Mini-ITX case (power supply 180 watts built-in)
Gigabyte GA-H87N-WIFI mobo
Intel Core i7 4770K cpu (not overclocked)
Noctua NH-L9i CPU cooler
Kingston 16 GB DDR3 RAM (two 8 GB boards)
Two Samsung 840 EVO SSDs
EVGA 2 GB GeForce GT 740 low profile graphics card
Pioneer BDXL Blu-ray/DVD writer

Software:
Gigabyte BIOS version F8
Mac OS X 10.10.5 (fresh installation from App Store)
Bootloader Chimera v 4.1 per Unibeast v 5.2 (DSDT free)
Post-installation per Multibeast v 7.5


Thanks for reading!

---- Bill Strohm

 

[lebleu29]

I am having the exact same problems.

 

[wstrohm]

I have now done the following process to attempt once again to solve this problem:
Removed secondary SSD, leaving only primary.
Erased and reformatted primary SSD.
Downloaded OS X installer for Yosemite 10.10.5 to the SSD.
Used Unibeast v 5.2 to create a 16 GB flash drive with Installer. Process completed with no problems.
Re-flashed Gigabyte motherboard (GA-H87N-WIFI) to BIOS version F8, using "Q-flash."
Set BIOS to "Optimized Defaults."
Installed OS X 10.10.5.
Checked for startup (failed), restart from Apple menu (failed), shutdown (failed).
Rechecked many times; startup works about 3 out of 10 tries. Restart never works from menu, from "Restart" button on computer front panel it works about 50% of the time. Shutdown from menu works about 40% of time. Once booted, Apple apps work fine.

Reconnected secondary SSD, migrated applications and documents to primary SSD, erased and re-partitioned secondary SSD, used Carbon Copy Cloner to refill secondary SSD from primary SSD. Once booted, all apps work fine.

Any help, folks? Thanks for reading!