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Mac mini will not boot up

K

KC2LLW

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 29, 2012
17
0
Hello,
Hello I have a 2010 Mac Mini with a SSD 8GB of Ram that will not boot up just gets to apple logo and gray wheel spins forever. I have tried to boot up from a DVD and a flash drive but no luck. The Mac mini was fine until I installed Web Root AV. It scan the HD and found some viruses cleaned them did a rescan and came up clean a few hours later got the spinning beach ball tried to restart and will no boot. Any ideas would be aprecaded.
Thanks,
Steve
 
Why Steve why? :eek:

I wonder why you used that antivirus program if the Mac mini was fine? You have been a MacRumors member longer than many. Do you always use 3rd party protection on your Macs or was there some specific problem or threat that you were dealing with?

FYI Web Root does not fare well when compared to other programs in this test: http://www.thesafemac.com/mac-anti-virus-testing-01-2013/


Do you use Time Machine or another backup solution?
 
Celerondon said:
Why Steve why? :eek:

I wonder why you used that antivirus program if the Mac mini was fine? You have been a MacRumors member longer than many. Do you always use 3rd party protection on your Macs or was there some specific problem or threat that you were dealing with?

FYI Web Root does not fare well when compared to other programs in this test: http://www.thesafemac.com/mac-anti-virus-testing-01-2013/


Do you use Time Machine or another backup solution?
Click to expand...

This Mac Mini is my 13 year old sons, He complained about it being a little slow. I had used Web Root on my i Mac with good results so I figured let me try it on his as he goes to you tube and all these crazy game sites. Now he has a Mac mini that can't boot I tried booting from the super drive holding the C down on start up and it just spits out the CD. It will not boot up in safe mode. I don't have much Mac knowledge other than I have many Apple products since 2009 when I made the switch form Windows and do love my Mac's as I am forced to use Windows at work. I just can't figure this out not sure if it is just a coincident about the AV or not. I hope my logic board is not shot?
 
OP wrote above:
[[ I hope my logic board is not shot? ]]

I doubt there's anything wrong with the logic board.

Sounds like the software (OS) on the drive has a problem.

If you had a backup, you could just restore from it.

What you really need now is an "alternative way of booting" the son's Mac.

Do you keep any kind of backup drives?
 
Maybe try to get it started in "Target disk mode" by pressing the 'T' key on power up.
Then with another Mac and a firewire cable connection you might be able gain access to the problem HD and run some tests and do maintenance.

Just thinking out loud here, but this has worked for me in the past.
 
Do you keep any kind of backup drives?

I never backed up the Mini I know I should have but never did. I should have leaned my lesson on this as I once had all our pictures and movies on a single Window laptop back in the early 2000's and lost all of it. My wife still to this day can't forgive me. I do have a i Mac and have a back up via USB to hard drive using time machine. Could I use this to get the mini booted??
 
KC2LLW said:
This Mac Mini is my 13 year old sons, He complained about it being a little slow. I had used Web Root on my i Mac with good results so I figured let me try it on his as he goes to you tube and all these crazy game sites. Now he has a Mac mini that can't boot I tried booting from the super drive holding the C down on start up and it just spits out the CD. It will not boot up in safe mode. I don't have much Mac knowledge other than I have many Apple products since 2009 when I made the switch form Windows and do love my Mac's as I am forced to use Windows at work. I just can't figure this out not sure if it is just a coincident about the AV or not. I hope my logic board is not shot?
Click to expand...

Do you still have that iMac? This could be your salvation! There are several ways that another Mac computer could help solve your problem with the Mac mini.
 
Celerondon said:

Do you still have that iMac? This could be your salvation! There are several ways that another Mac computer could help solve your problem with the Mac mini.
Click to expand...

Yes I do have the iMac and it is backed up to a external HD
 
You haven't mentioned what Operating system is on the mini, newer systems have different recovery options.
Also have you tried to boot into "Single user mode" and do some disk maintenance, scroll down to about mid page.
As for booting from a DVD, anything but the original install DVD for that mini or a Snow Leopard "retail" full install DVD would get spit back out.
 
Last edited:
marclondon said:
The obvious thing to do is get a USB stick and bung Yosemite on and see if you can boot your Mini from that.

M.
Click to expand...

I tried that but it was so slow, I put Yosemite on a 16GB USB stick and very slow with beach ball spinning forever! I may get a fire wire and try off my i mac tonight.
 
KC2LLW said:
I tried that but it was so slow, I put Yosemite on a 16GB USB stick and very slow with beach ball spinning forever! I may get a fire wire and try off my i mac tonight.
Click to expand...

Another option is to put Yosemite on your external drive - you may be able to partition it to keep your Time Machine backup. Or you could sacrifice the backup and backup your stuff to say iCloud or Dropbox, or buy another external.

M.
 
marclondon said:
Another option is to put Yosemite on your external drive - you may be able to partition it to keep your Time Machine backup. Or you could sacrifice the backup and backup your stuff to say iCloud or Dropbox, or buy another external.

M.
Click to expand...

I do also back up my iMac to back blaze so maybe I could use the external drive from my iMac and put Yosemite on it.

----------
jbarley said:
You haven't mentioned what Operating system is on the mini, newer systems have different recovery options.
Also have you tried to boot into "Single user mode" and do some disk maintenance, scroll down to about mid page.
As for booting from a DVD, anything but the original install DVD for that mini or a Snow Leopard "retail" full install DVD would get spit back out.
Click to expand...

I think mini was running Lion
 
I just want to thank all that helped me and replied to my post. I finally got the mini up and running last night. I ended up erasing the SSD and doing a fresh install. He really had no files so we only lost our Word,Powerpoint and Excel for Mac program, which I will have to buy a new one. the Mac mini 4.1, 2.4Ghz with 8GB of memory and 120GB SSD is flying again.
Thank you,
Steve
 
KC2LLW said:
I just want to thank all that helped me and replied to my post. I finally got the mini up and running last night. I ended up erasing the SSD and doing a fresh install. He really had no files so we only lost our Word,Powerpoint and Excel for Mac program, which I will have to buy a new one. the Mac mini 4.1, 2.4Ghz with 8GB of memory and 120GB SSD is flying again.
Thank you,
Steve
Click to expand...

Oh and I plan on buying a WD Passport 1TB External HD for Mac today and setup time machine :) maybe setup Backblaze too!!
 
[[ Oh and I plan on buying a WD Passport 1TB External HD for Mac today and setup time machine maybe setup Backblaze too!! ]]

Before you settle on Time Machine, I'd suggest you try either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper for a little while.

Either will create a BOOTABLE cloned backup of the internal drive.

Why have a fully bootable backup?
Because THE NEXT TIME you get into an "I can't boot!" moment, all you'll have to do is connect the backup, and reboot...
 
Fishrrman said:
[[ Oh and I plan on buying a WD Passport 1TB External HD for Mac today and setup time machine maybe setup Backblaze too!! ]]

Before you settle on Time Machine, I'd suggest you try either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper for a little while.

Either will create a BOOTABLE cloned backup of the internal drive.

Why have a fully bootable backup?
Because THE NEXT TIME you get into an "I can't boot!" moment, all you'll have to do is connect the backup, and reboot...
Click to expand...

is this an online service? maybe I should be doing this to my iMac too as this is the Mac with all the important stuff. I use Backblaze and time machine for the iMac only and has all my pics and documents
 
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