Alright so about a year ago I purchased a used 2009 mac mini off of ebay. It was running great, I was using it as a media center in my living room. I decided that the 120gb hard drive wasn't enough space to hold all of my media, and the 2gb of ram wasn't cutting it either. So i purchased 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 ram, and a Western Digital blue 1tb hard drive. So I performed the upgrade, installed the hard drive and RAM. I also upgraded the software to Mountain Lion. Well a few days after I performed the upgrade the computer would randomly shut down and restart. Once the computer booted back up again it would show an error message saying "your computer has been restarted because of a problem." I continued having these problems, so I figured the older computer just couldn't handle running mountain lion. So I downgraded to snow leopard. I believe the computer is acting even worse now than it was before. Safari quits un-expectedly all of the time, flash video like netflix and youtube crash constantly, and the computer makes me re-install microsoft silver light everytime it crashes while i'm watching netflix. I'm completely baffeled as to why the computer is doing this. Does anyone have any experience with something like this? Did I mess up something simple? Let me know, because this computer is driving me crazy!!
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Mac Mini issues.. programs quitting, computer restarting randomly, etc.
- Thread starter eskomo021
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One or both of your mods is the problem. You're definitely using the wrong RAM (spec is 1067, not 1333), but that might not be the problem because higher spec RAM sometimes works. You should use spec though. Mountain Lion definitely might not like 1333.
When you downgraded to Snow Leopard, what was your exact procedure? List every step.
Also, does that 1 TB hard drive fit properly?
To add to the other response, Mountain Lion runs perfectly well on an early 2009 Mac mini. As long as the software is clean, you can be relatively assured it's a hardware issue you're dealing with.
It may be possible that the Ram is not properly seated. i know for a act that it can get a bit tricky inside the mini. And I have a "leftover" tiny piece of black plastic from my own Ram replacement to prove my knowledge 
I was using exactly specced Ram though, for sure.
I was using exactly specced Ram though, for sure.
It's best to run RAM within the recommended Mac OEM specs for that year and model. Using newer or different RAM can mean different CL timing and voltages. Many of the newer DDR3 modules default to 1.35v while the older RAM is usually 1.5v. Newer Macs (2011 and later) can use both voltages and adjust CL timing but many of the older Mac machines can not. It is possible to either damage the RAM or cause incompatibilities for the Mac when you don't install memory within OEM spec for that model. The brands of memory I would recommend for best consistent compatibility would be Crucial and Kingston. You can check those manufacturer web sites for RAM that is OEM compatible for your model of Mac.
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Why do people ignore a manufacturer's RAM specifications? It's asking for trouble.