No video on Mac Mini...not sure HDD spins up either

[swindmill]

My brother was using his Mac Mini the other day when it completely froze on him. He had to force restart it, and it when it came back on there was no video. I'm messing with it now and it doesn't sound like the HD is even spinning up, although the Mini turns on. I tried to boot off the Leopard install disk with no luck. The disk does spin up. Incidentally, I cannot get the disk out. I've tried pushing on the button inside the drive on the left, with no luck.

So, any ideas on what has happened to his Mini, and/or any suggestions as to how I can get the disk out of it?

 

[Moof1904]

I just had to take my father's mini into the Apple store to have it repaired. It was exhibiting symptoms similar to yours. One thing that the Apple repair tech told me is that the mini is unique in that power is somehow routed through the hard drive assembly and if the hard drive in a mini dies there won't be any startup chime, blinking question mark, or anything from a mini. This is in contrast to any other mac where a dead hard drive would still result in a startup chime and a blinking question mark.

So, it may simply be that the hard drive in the mini has died. Depending on your warranty and backup status, this may or may not be better than some other failed Mini component.

 

[swindmill]

He has had it under a year, and I cloned his drive last week before installing Leopard, so assuming it's a hardware issue, he's just looking at an inconvenience. I just wish I could get the Leopard disk out.