2014 Mac Mini only starts up after NVRAM reset

[claaariii]

Hi all!

I have a 2014 Mac Mini running High Sierra. Yesterday it randomly started not waking up from sleep. I had to force restart several times throughout the day (by pushing the power button), and it would start up fine (giving the "your Mac was shut down because of a problem, would you like to reopen the programs that were running, etc" message upon start up). This morning, again, it wouldn't wake from sleep. Instead of doing a simple force restart, I figured I'd try an SMC reset while I was it, to see if the issue would be fixed (force powered off... unplugged for 15+ seconds, plugged back in, waited 5 seconds, turned on). The Apple loading screen took foreverrrrr to "load" and then stayed stuck with the bar at 100% for a good chunk of time. I forced shut down, tried to open in Safe Mode, would not load at all... tried to open in Recovery Mode, would not load at all. Almost kind of started crying, tried an NVRAM reset, and it then started up fine! Fast forward a couple hours, lunch time, left the computer, came back and it was sleeping... again, wouldn't wake. Forced shut down, again it would stay on the loading screen forever. Reset the NVRAM, and it worked.

Any ideas? This is driving me crazy. I (think) I've now managed to successfully set the computer to just not sleep at all, which is the only "solution" I can think of for now.

The only weird thing that has happened lately, a couple days ago: I have a dual-monitor set up, and the other day upon waking from sleep, the resolution on my secondary display was way off. The only option display preferences would give me other than "default for display" (with huge icons/really bad resolution) were 800x600 (same as default) and 1200xsomething which stretched everything really wide. I messed around with the cables for both displays, switched which port each one plugged into and everything looked great, except my primary monitor was now the secondary one. I figured switching the cables back to each of their original ports would switch them back... it didn't, but then I found the option to just drag the menu bar in Display Preferences to choose the primary monitor. So that was all weird/different, and I don't know why the resolution got messed up in the first place, but everything looks and works like normal now, as long as the Mini doesn't sleep... I don't know if there might be some related display issue.

NEXT-DAY EDIT: Last night I decided to shut down the Mini instead of having it sleep, hoping to avoid the issue. I just turned it on and the same exact thing happened... black screen with white loading bar, goes to 100% and just stays there. I forced shut down, reset NVRAM, and it started up fine. So basically:

---- Mini won't wake from sleep (I accidentally put it to sleep manually twice yesterday (command+option+eject) and immediately said, "ah, no!!! Don't sleep!" hit the spacebar a few times and it woke up fine, but I don't think it had even fully slept yet.

---- Mini ONLY starts up after an NVRAM reset.

I read something about NVRAM resets working similar to safe mode, where it doesn't load third-party drivers and the such until after start up? I have no clue how to proceed though...

Thank you all in advance!

 

[JoeSnack]

Claaariii, I have a 2012 MacMini (2.3 Ghz i7, 16GB ram) and I ran into a somewhat similar situation a few months ago. If my computer went to sleep, it often wouldn't wake up. Sometimes when I'd reboot, the OS load status bar would freeze at random spots. But my setup would eventually freeze while working--not only on sleep. For me, the problem was the internal SATA circuitry on the logic board. That means that any drive I connected to the two internal SATA ports got wonky after only a few minutes of use. I wound up trying to replace the connector cables that attach to the logic board and hard drive(s). In my case, I was using brand new SSDs. Installing new drives was of zero help... My fix was to attach an SSD to an external USB-3 SSD case (the external case costs $10 on Amazon), and put my internal drive from inside the Mini into that external case. Once I booted from the external drive, my system was fine. Now your issue might be far simpler than mine. Your internal hard drive might be failing. If it's been in you Mini since 2014, that could be your problem. All you'd have to do to fix it is replace the internal drive. And hopefully back up that malfunctioning internal drive ASAP (I'd do this immediately today if you can just in case your problem is indeed a failing hard drive). If you feel tech-savvy enough, the simplest way to figure out if you have a drive problem is to run a diagnostic tool and see if it reports serious errors. This one is free and made by a reputable company (BlackMagic): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blackmagic-disk-speed-test/id425264550?mt=12

Option 1) If the report says that your drive is fine, then ignore the rest of this response. Your problem is different than mine was.

Option 2) If the report says that your drive is failing, you can buy a new 2.5 inch SSD from Amazon or wherever and swap the failing 2014 internal drive with that new SSD drive. Look on Youtube, Ifixit, or OWC's website for video tutorials on how to swap drives. You may have to buy a cheap set of tools to do the swap. While you swap the drive you can buy a cheap USB-3 external case that fits a 2.5 inch drive (a brand I like is called Sabrent and they go for $9-$10 on Amazon too). Put your failing internal harddrive into that external case and clone that drive (Using the DiskUtility RESTORE function) to the new internal SSD. But, any harddrive errors on the old drive might make copying impossible or give you a less-than-stellar operating OS on that new SSD. The better option would be for you to reinstall a new fresh copy of Catalina or whatever OS you use onto the new internal SSD. If you've been running Time Machine, hopefully you can re-install necessary files from that backup to the new internal SSD.

Option 3) If option 2 still didn't work, your last ditch effort (should your problem be a hard drive issue) is to do what I had to do. My internal SATA chipset on my Mini logic board failed. This failure made any drive that was installed internally look as if it were failing. But they weren't in truth. I simply had to run my new cleanly re-installed/restored OS hard drive from the USB-3 external case at all times. I removed my internal drive never to put it back (*see note below on why this can cause an issue in the future). All of my freeze-ups and sleep glitches vanished after that. I even tried to replace the cables that run from the logic board to internal hard drives and my drive failure problems continued. I've been working in audio and video production on an external SSD setup for three months now with no real hitch. There is one setback though. If you ever need to install any recent Mac OS onto that external SSD drive, you must have a drive attached to the internal SATA port within the Mini or you won't be able to install the OS. When I re-installed Catalina on my new external SSD setup as described above, I had to make sure a drive was attached inside my Mini. Again, Mac won't allow installations to any external drive without an internal drive present. Since my logic board was malfunctioning, this was a pain. But I was luckily able to install Catalina on my external SSD drive and then remove my internal drive afterwards. Take a look on Youtube, iFixit, or OWC's website for videos on how to do the internal drive hardware install or removal. If this all sounds too crazy, the answer is yes! I had to spend days figuring this all out right at the start of the pandemic when my Mac crashed hard. If you need to seek a Mac repair person, at least I hope this response will help you and them troubleshoot.

One final note: Once you use a USB-3 port to run your operating OS, any additional external USB-3 drives attached to the Mini's USB-3 ports will run slower as all the USB-3 ports run on the same internal bus. That means I must place all audio/video files I'm editing on the same USB-3 external drive that runs Catalina. It's a small price to pay when SSD drives are way cheaper today and this workaround allowed me to salvage my Mac without replacing the logic board.

 

[claaariii]

Hey Joe!

Thanks so much for your detailed reply. I'm REALLY hoping my problem isn't as serious as yours was, as I'm in Argentina and getting the parts you mention isn't as simple (or cheap!) as just an Amazon click 😬

I did download the tool you linked to, but it seems to be just a "disk speed test", not a diagnostic/error reporting tool... did you link to the correct one? Either way, I let it run for a bit and everything is mostly checked green, only a few white X's towards the bottom, so I'm guessing that's at least positive, since I don't do anything too intensive: basically only Word, PDFs, and audio/video transcription.

This IS the originally drive in the Mini...BUT, I bought everything brand new barely a year ago, so it hasn't been "in use" since 2014...

I've just kept it on these last few days, only manually turning the display off when I'm away from the computer for longer chunks of time/at night, because I'm kinda scared of turning it off. Let me know about that diagnostic tool if you can, though! Thanks!!

 

[JoeSnack]

I think that Black Magic app was the best thing out there for free. If almost everything came up green, then you shouldn't be in the midst of a terrible drive failure. Sorry, based on your command of the English language (and style) I figured you were living in N. America. If you ever want to try the external drive trick should you be able to get the parts in easier fashion than you can now, grab a cheap external SSD and external case and just install Catalina on it and run your machine from it. If the sleep issues go away, you'll know your current drive or the logic board are to blame. But it sounds as if your problem may not be SATA chip or hard drive related. I wish I had more advice. Hope your system holds up!

 

[JoeSnack]

Oh, and to clarify, that Black Magic test is indeed for video speeds. I'm not 100% sure it will tell you if there are drive errors. My bad. You can always run DiskUtility from your Applications/Utilities folder and do Disk First Aid. See if any errors pop up.

Unfortunmately software that once used to be free for this stuff is getting harder to come by. If your drive is truly a problem, hopefully Disk First Aid will tell you so.

 

[claaariii]

Thanks for your input! I've only just now had to restart the Mini, because the power went out and it turned off. Issue is still there, I had to zap the PRAM for it to load properly. But everything else works perfectly fine once it starts up... from what I've read elsewhere, I'm thinking it might be the PRAM battery, I'm guessing that would be simple to find here, but not sure if I'm brave enough to open up the Mini. Trying to find out what "happens" if it is indeed the battery and I just keep using it like this, although it's obviously not ideal. I'm also scared of doing any updates that require restarts, as I don't know if zapping the PRAM in the middle of that could "break" anything 😬

(And I was born in Argentina, but lived in California and went to school there, K-12, so I'm definitely native in both English and Spanish )