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hkbladelawkhk

macrumors member
Original poster
May 25, 2010
83
0
I picked up a Mac Mini with my dad a few years back and I must say. This is the WORST mac I've ever dealt with. Constant freezing (even on minuscule tasks, such as scanning today). It's even upped to 8gigs of ram. Anyone have any ideas? It's not heavily loaded, not a lot of icons, pretty clean actually....All of us in the family have macs and none of us have the issues he does. Hell, it CRASHED to the point of needing to be rebuilt. wtf?
 
I picked up a Mac Mini with my dad a few years back and I must say. This is the WORST mac I've ever dealt with. Constant freezing (even on minuscule tasks, such as scanning today). It's even upped to 8gigs of ram. Anyone have any ideas? It's not heavily loaded, not a lot of icons, pretty clean actually....All of us in the family have macs and none of us have the issues he does. Hell, it CRASHED to the point of needing to be rebuilt. wtf?

It sounds like the memory upgrade you put in, is killing your system....
 
I agree with mdzwarts. The RAM could easily be the cause. But why did you wait "years" before trying to address this?
 
It was sluggish before. Ironically, the ram I first picked up was bad. Tested and swapped out. This set tested fine. It's quicker than it was with the pathetic 2 gigs, but still not up to par with what 8 should bring.
 
Try a G4 Mac Mini. Using slower programs on the G4 will be faster than using newer programs on an intell.
 
I picked up a Mac Mini with my dad a few years back and I must say. This is the WORST mac I've ever dealt with. Constant freezing (even on minuscule tasks, such as scanning today). It's even upped to 8gigs of ram. Anyone have any ideas? It's not heavily loaded, not a lot of icons, pretty clean actually....All of us in the family have macs and none of us have the issues he does. Hell, it CRASHED to the point of needing to be rebuilt. wtf?

what year is it? 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006

They are all old slow gear.

2011 and or 2012 are quick.
 
If it's new / under warranty - I'd try that first.

Aside from that, I'd look at a faster hard drive (better yet, an SSD). The drive that shipped in my mid 2010 was painfully slow - even with 8GB or ram. Once I dropped in a faster drive - it's been a better experience. Thinking of a SSD now that prices have come down so much. Just be prepared, swapping the hard drive on the mid 2010 was orders of magnitude more than any other Mac I've ever used. Though I'm sure still better than the glued / taped current gen stuff...
 
I picked up a Mac Mini with my dad a few years back and I must say. This is the WORST mac I've ever dealt with. Constant freezing (even on minuscule tasks, such as scanning today). It's even upped to 8gigs of ram. Anyone have any ideas? It's not heavily loaded, not a lot of icons, pretty clean actually....All of us in the family have macs and none of us have the issues he does. Hell, it CRASHED to the point of needing to be rebuilt. wtf?

You probably should have returned it while it was under warranty. Why did you sit back and watch it crash all the time?
 
Sounds like something is wrong as I have a mid 2010 C2D Mac mini with 4GB and a normal 5,200 RPM hard drive and have no issues at all. Never slows down and has always remained responsive. I use it for everyday tasks (email, browsing etc.) and for playing and streaming media (1080p videos, high quality music) and have hooked up a guitar a few times and never had any issues.
 
Yeah, I have a stock 2010 Mac Mini, with upgraded RAM to 8GB. I've done some pretty intensive stuff with it, including video editing on Adobe Premier. No slowdowns.

If it were me, and I was having problems, I would have made sure I renewed my Apple Care coverage before the expiration date. Apple probably would have given you a new machine by now.

One thing you can do is get your installation disks that came with the computer and reinstall Mac OS X. Don't install or update anything and see if the computer acts the same. If it acts normally, it could mean there is a software issue and you can slowly start installing/upgrading applications and see which one causes the slow down.

I once had a PowerBook several years ago that had similar problems as your Mac Mini (I made sure I kept my Apple Care current). They replaced several things on that computer and it still became unresponsive at times. So I pulled out the disks that came with the computer and reinstalled OS X and nothing else. Sure enough, the computer continued to act the same. I shared this information with Apple and they gave me a new computer (replacing a 3-year old computer!)
 
Sounds like you bought bad ram and have randomly been tolerant of it for years. Chalk this up to inexperience. A computer shouldn't have trouble even once a week.
 
I picked up a Mac Mini with my dad a few years back and I must say. This is the WORST mac I've ever dealt with. Constant freezing (even on minuscule tasks, such as scanning today). It's even upped to 8gigs of ram. Anyone have any ideas? It's not heavily loaded, not a lot of icons, pretty clean actually....All of us in the family have macs and none of us have the issues he does. Hell, it CRASHED to the point of needing to be rebuilt. wtf?

How did the mini perform the day you first got it -- before you did any modifications with memory or the OS?
 
You might also suffer from a dying hard disk. Did you do a disk check in Disk Utility yet?
It should be one of the more trouble free models actually.
 
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