Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Mac mini 2010 will not boot from recorvery disk

M

macizcool

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 4, 2010
148
170
Hey everyone,

I have been having a lot of problems with my Mac mini 2010, so I decided to just wipe the thing and use a fresh install of 10.8. I'm not even sure the mini had a recovery disk previously, as I was never able to boot from it while trying to fix the previous install of 10.8. So I wanted to be absolutely sure I had a recovery partition this time.

Well, after wiping the drive and installing 10.8, the recovery partition is definitely there, but I cannot start up from it. I tried holding down command-R and also the option key at startup. Both attempts results in a gray screen, and I don't hear any sounds coming from the hard drive, so it's not doing anything.

Any suggestions?
 
Well, I reset the SMC and PRAM... I did finally get the computer to boot to recovery disk after I let it sit on a gray screen for a while (I left the room for ten minutes and when I came back, I had the choose startup disk screen). However, the computer would not respond to any of my bluetooth mice, and I don't have any wired ones. Is this normal?
 
macizcool said:
Well, I reset the SMC and PRAM... I did finally get the computer to boot to recovery disk after I let it sit on a gray screen for a while (I left the room for ten minutes and when I came back, I had the choose startup disk screen). However, the computer would not respond to any of my bluetooth mice, and I don't have any wired ones. Is this normal?
Click to expand...

yep you need a wired mouse any cheap one will do. If you are in the usa go to walmart or best buy and get the cheapest one.
 
Your hard drive could be on its way out - especially if it's taking that long after boot to just identify a partition. Should you get the OS up and running - I'd run disk utility and check the status of your drive before doing much else.

It's not conclusive - but many times I started getting repeated hangs on boot / restart - drives failed shortly thereafter.
 
Oddly, it did respond to my Microsoft Bluetooth mouse for about 2 milliseconds, then stopped. I had to use my wired keyboard to get around. It was majorly delayed, though. When I was trying to choose the recovery partition for start-up, it took about 10 seconds before it would recognize the keystroke.

I already ran a SMART scan on my hard drive, and it passed. I've also run disk utility on the drive and it passed.

Fortunately, I paid for the Apple Care on this computer. And it's mainly used as a HTPC, so I have the ability to try new things and wait to see how it runs. However, I'm running out of ideas and I'm beginning to think it's time to go to the genius bar.
 
Do you have another Macintosh that you can make a Recovery Disk with and attempt to boot from that?

I also have a 2010 Mac mini and it's hard disk has failed, so that could be a possibility. The hard disk has struggled with poor performance for some time.
 
monkeybagel said:
Do you have another Macintosh that you can make a Recovery Disk with and attempt to boot from that?

I also have a 2010 Mac mini and it's hard disk has failed, so that could be a possibility. The hard disk has struggled with poor performance for some time.
Click to expand...

I have a firewire hard drive with OS X installed.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back