Is my Mac Mini dead?

[Jona330]

Hi all,

I am running Mavericks and attached an external hard drive via USB with Windows 7 on it, the plan was to wipe the drive and then use for Mac storage

The Windows 7 showed on the desktop which I viewed the files on, i then put the Mac to sleep.

Now all i have on the display is a grey screen, no apple logo. The mac makes the initial boot up sound but nothing else happens

I have tried disconnecting the power for a while, and pulled all other connected items and still nothing.

I have a NAS drive with a time machine backup on it that i can access via a windows machine if necessary

If i reattach the hard drive with windows 7 on it starts to boot in windows, then i get an error message and goes no further.

The Mac mini is still under warranty, but would appreciate any advice?

Cheers

Simon

 

[Jona330]

Wow,

120 views and no one has any ideas

It's not looking good!

 

[philipma1957]

it is confused and can not find the mac hdd to boot from.

I have not done what you did in more then 2 or 3 years.



if I recall you need to flip the mini over take the bottom cover off and disconnect the hdd. not the whole thing just the little cable.

the entire guide
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac+Mini+Late+2012+Hard+Drive+Replacement/11716

the sata cable
https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/fIwnDE6exwHUTgMB.huge

then boot with no cable . it will not work.

then power off . then attach cable . then boot.

and it has been so long since I have done this I am not sure if I am right. at least about the fix.


It may be detach the cable and boot. then power off. then attach a super duper clone of your internal hdd vis usb and boot.

since you don't have that clone you can't fix it.




other fixes involve doing a recovery from the net which can work.

but you need to attach an external blank hdd and load a new mavericks to it. I have not trouble shot minis in a few years i am a bit rusty

 

[Jona330]

Thanks very much for the reply, I will give that a shot!

 

[1934hotrod]

Wow,

120 views and no one has any ideas

It's not looking good!

That was a big help ... !

Insert the install cd, let the machine boot from that it has a good OS. When it comes up go to preference and make sure the startup volume is the MAC os, if not high light it and reboot.

 

[Jona330]

That was a big help ... !

Insert the install cd, let the machine boot from that it has a good OS. When it comes up go to preference and make sure the startup volume is the MAC os, if not high light it and reboot.

Unfortunately I have no install cd, or drive!

I only have a time machine backup, beginning to see the problem with that

 

[dan1eln1el5en]

when booting hold the "alt" button and you will get access to the recovery partition, check the drives that it can find, perhaps repair file permissions etc.
shouldn't be necessary to reinstall.

 

[Weaselboy]

Hi all,

I am running Mavericks and attached an external hard drive via USB with Windows 7 on it, the plan was to wipe the drive and then use for Mac storage

The Windows 7 showed on the desktop which I viewed the files on, i then put the Mac to sleep.

Now all i have on the display is a grey screen, no apple logo. The mac makes the initial boot up sound but nothing else happens

Simply attaching a Windows external disk would not cause OS X to lose track of the boot drive. Even if it did, once you unplug the Windows drive OS X would search for available boot drives and find the main OS X partition anyway.

I think you have something else going on here and it is a coincidence it popped up when the Win drive was attached.

So with the Win drive disconnected, can you hold command-r (both keys together) and boot to recovery? Once there try and run a verify disk and see what that says and let us know.

What year model Mac is this?

 

[Jona330]

Simply attaching a Windows external disk would not cause OS X to lose track of the boot drive. Even if it did, once you unplug the Windows drive OS X would search for available boot drives and find the main OS X partition anyway.

I think you have something else going on here and it is a coincidence it popped up when the Win drive was attached.

So with the Win drive disconnected, can you hold command-r (both keys together) and boot to recovery? Once there try and run a verify disk and see what that says and let us know.

What year model Mac is this?

No command r just stays at the grey screen . Mac mini is 2012 i7 model

 

[Weaselboy]

No command r just stays at the grey screen . Mac mini is 2012 i7 model

Maybe dead drive. Try holding command-option-r (all three at once) when booting. That will ask for your wifi password, then you will see a spinning globe while the recovery utility downloads from Apple's servers. Once that finishes, you should see the recovery screen below.

From there, launch Disk Util and try to select your drive and do a verify disk and tell us what that says.

 

[Jambalaya]

Jona, does sound rather odd. Clearly lesson 1 is never attach anything to do with windows to a mac as you've infected it (that's a joke by the way)

You should be able to boot into one of the recovery modes including one which allows you to chose which hard drive to boot from (it does sound like the machine has somehow got confused). You may possibly have re-formatted the wrong drive ?

Have a look at the different modes here, good luck

Startup Modes

 

[Jona330]

Thanks for all the replies on this. I haven't tried the disconnect the Hdd but all others have failed. As still under warranty decided to take into a store to get looked at. Cheers

 

[spatlese44]

Please let us know what happens. I'm betting it's what Weaselboy said.

 

[Jona330]

It's alive!!!!!!!!

It was a problem with the vga display port adapter, replaced it and problem fixed!

Thanks for all replies on this, thought I had killed it!