My Intel Mac mini died in one day!

[miniConvert]

Ok, so my first Mac, and up until a few hours ago I was absolutely made up.

Anyway, I clicked Log Off to see if my Airport would reconnect by itself - it's been being a bit picky about whether it automatically connects or not. The Mac didn't finish logging off, and just froze with the pinwheel. After a good long while I switched off the machine at the back and turned it back on again.

I got a picture of a power button with "You need to restart your computer" or words to that affect, in various different languages, every time I turned the Mac on - just before it was about to prompt me to enter my password.

So, slightly worried, I called Applecare. We spent an hour running various utilities on the system and holding down god-knows-how-many bizzare combinations of keys on the keyboard while booting up but everything we did still caused the error message to be displayed when booting up normally.

I managed to go on Safe Boot with him and note down some things out of my Mail, then we initiated a clean reinstall after he spoke to some of his colleagues to get second/third opinions.

OS X is reinstalling as I type this. I just hope it works when it's finished I've never, ever had a machine fail on me so quickly! Talk about unlucky.

 

[calebjohnston]

=( sorry to hear about that. Unfortunately, with such a big change as switching to entirely different processors, there are going to be problems. It's unfortunate, but it's the truth. I'm sure your computer will work fine after the reinstall.

 

[GFLPraxis]

The "You need to restart your computer" message is a kernel panic. It's *usually* caused by hardware problems. You may need to get Apple to fix or replace it.

 

[menziep]

Ok, so my first Mac, and up until a few hours ago I was absolutely made up.

Anyway, I clicked Log Off to see if my Airport would reconnect by itself - it's been being a bit picky about whether it automatically connects or not. The Mac didn't finish logging off, and just froze with the pinwheel. After a good long while I switched off the machine at the back and turned it back on again.

I got a picture of a power button with "You need to restart your computer" or words to that affect, in various different languages, every time I turned the Mac on - just before it was about to prompt me to enter my password.

So, slightly worried, I called Applecare. We spent an hour running various utilities on the system and holding down god-knows-how-many bizzare combinations of keys on the keyboard while booting up but everything we did still caused the error message to be displayed when booting up normally.

I managed to go on Safe Boot with him and note down some things out of my Mail, then we initiated a clean reinstall after he spoke to some of his colleagues to get second/third opinions.

OS X is reinstalling as I type this. I just hope it works when it's finished I've never, ever had a machine fail on me so quickly! Talk about unlucky.

Ive never had this problem but ive had probs on my windows

so try holding down the power buttom
if that dosnt work try this site LINK

If Theres no help There then Phone Apple Support (numbers on Apple Site) there usualy good.(better Than Microsoft 26 mins to get an person on the end of the phone and 30 mins of tech support.)

 

[tribe3]

I got the same crash on my MBP while turning Airport to "ON". I had to shut it down and when I restarted a sign appeared saying "Tiger crashed; You wanna send the report?" but my Airport was still "Off" so the report just stayed home.
Fortunately it only happened once and all is working well ever since

 

[oddball85@aol.c]

Good luck!

HEY. I ordered a MacBook Pro andd it shipped today. It'll arrive in about a week). Anyway, good luck! I hope it works. I've had this happen on my iBook many times.

 

[miniConvert]

*screams*

Full clean reinstall completed.

Boots fine, connects to wireless network during setup. Downloads updates.

Restarts fine, but Airport doesn't connect to anything. Created a Home location instead of Automatic. Airport connects by itself.

Restarted mini to see if Airport is going to automatically connect. Chime heard... a few seconds later, kernel panic.

Restarted into Safe Boot, removed the Home location I made and set it back to automatic. Restarted. Kernel panic.

So, I've lost everything I'd set up only for it to die on me a second time. I'm all kinds of angry right now Tech support is closed so I can't do anything until tomorrow.

Does anybody have any suggestions? If I can get into Safe Boot then surely there's some logfile or something that'll inidicate to me when and why the kernel panic took place?

 

[BornAgainMac]

Bad memory on my Mac did that. Swap out the memory or better yet have Apple do that for you.

 

[munkees]

once the system is configured the first time with the wireless under the automatic setting, if you reboot does it still crash?

if not that could narrow done a fault with the airport network configuration, might be able do do a work around

 

[York-Diuck]

I jus say take it back. You had it for 1 day and it's already giving you hell. I think if there's problems as early as this that it is likely you either got a lemon or the ram is bad like said above. Point is you don't want to chance owning a lemon, I had one before and it was hell.

 

[Dreadnought]

Did you do a hardware diagnostic? Sounds like some component is broken, that's why you have the kernal panics. Probably the Ram. Try to open your mini, get the Ram out and re-install it. Also look if there is anything loose in it, a wire/connector or a heatsink, etc.

 

[munkees]

Bad memory on my Mac did that. Swap out the memory or better yet have Apple do that for you.

memory can do strange things. There must be a ton of bad memory out there because everybody seems to be blaming alot of faults on bad memory.

 

[munkees]

you live in kent, how far is you nearest apple reseller, you might want to take you mini to them to have it fixed, or call apple care to do a swap. Don't open this mini, it your first mac and you don't want to destory you warrenty.

it saddens me to see first time mac users have problems. My first 5 mac never faulted once, in fact I have had only one mac with problems, that is my ibook G3 700, and it took that 2 1/2 years for problems to arise. But applecare fixed those.

Good Luck

 

[sk1985]

Just return that computer.

You just bought it and it already has all sorts of problems (imagine the problems you'll have long term), just exchange it in for a new one.

 

[MattyMac]

If I were you, I would definitely try and return it for a new one...being that you only had it for one day. I too am a recent switcher and I love my powerbook, but if that happened, I wouldnt hesitate to get a new one so I wouldnt have any worries in the future. It may be a pain now to go through a return process, but it would be better in the long run.

A Fellow Recent Convert

 

[miniConvert]

Thanks for the quick replies.

I wont be opening the machine up. This is going to sound awfully snotty but I didn't spend a fortune (relative) on such a spec'd up mini to have to poke putty knives into it and pull bits out.

The guy on the phone ran me through a hard disk diagnostic and permissions diagnostic but everything seemed fine. I'll boot back up into the install CD and see what other utilities there are.

At this stage I think York-Diuck is probably right. It's brand new. If they wont replace it then I'll have to return it and buy a new one :\

 

[tsfall]

Well, looks like a trip to the Apple Store in Bluewater for you then!! Have a chat to the Genius's, they're really good. I had problems with my first MBP and they replaced it for me.

Sorry to hear you're having problems, mine where hardware rather than software and I had a DOA unit (happens to any comp manufacturer).

Regards
Tom Fall
Essex lad

 

[miniConvert]

Thanks again.

Update: Managed to disable Airport using the shell in Safe Boot mode and guess what? It boots! So, it's either a hardware or software problem concerning the Airport module. So it's pretty much still going to have to get repaired or replaced, unless anyone can come up with some suggestions for troubleshooting a kernel panic caused by the Airport initialising? :S

 

[MrTchMan]

Hopefully they will take care of it for you. I have recieved a new laptop with a bad LCD before.

 

[miniConvert]

Ok, some more info.

The problem is definitely Airport related. Currently I've got the mini working just fine, but it doesn't automatically connect to a wireless network. It just sits there with everything not working until I click on the Airport icon and select the one single wireless network, my one for which it has the password stored, before it connects.

Perhaps this will be fixed along with the problems all the other Intel users are moaning about? Or perhaps I'm being far too optimistic. Either way, I'll call Apple again tomorrow and see what they say.

 

[savar]

Ok, some more info.

The problem is definitely Airport related. Currently I've got the mini working just fine, but it doesn't automatically connect to a wireless network. It just sits there with everything not working until I click on the Airport icon and select the one single wireless network, my one for which it has the password stored, before it connects.

Perhaps this will be fixed along with the problems all the other Intel users are moaning about? Or perhaps I'm being far too optimistic. Either way, I'll call Apple again tomorrow and see what they say.

Did you see this thread?

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/184416/

Sounds like what you're experiencing. At first I was going to say it sounds like an unseated Airport card. If you're comfortable with it, try opening up your mini and reseating the card.

But from the above thread its looking like there are driver issues with the Intel wireless chipset. Are you still getting kernel panics? Until this problem gets resolved you might want to remove the airport kernel extension from your extensions folder.

 

[miniConvert]

But from the above thread its looking like there are driver issues with the Intel wireless chipset. Are you still getting kernel panics? Until this problem gets resolved you might want to remove the airport kernel extension from your extensions folder.

Only if I change any of the Airport settings from the defaults. At the moment I literally just entered the password details when prompted and then left it alone. Initially I got the system working again by editing the config file for Airport and changing the 1 to a 0 so it was disabled.

It's that the kernel panics don't hit until the computer next starts that really really peeves me off. It made isolating the problem down to the Airport card a very tedious job indeed.

Thanks again to everyone for helping!

 

[miniConvert]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but here's an update:

In response to whenever I change my Airport card settings a kernel panic taking place on next boot (and then every boot until the airport card is disabled) and the issue of the Airport card not connecting automatically Apple is building me a brand new replacement that will be constructed and shipped priority.

The man I spoke to at Applecare gave me flawless service - I didn't ask for a replacement, he did it all. We chatted for about half an hour, and he told me how the machine he was using at that moment hadn't been rebooted in three years, lol!

So, new mini on the way, reassuring customer service, and a happy me

 

[DougTheImpaler]

Three years? I find his claim a little unsettling, as that means he's missing security updates and he's still running Jaguar.

 

[princealfie]

talk about an apple zapper!