My Mac Mini experienced a HDD failure last weekend. Unfortunately I had no backup whatsoever. I bought it second hand without the restore discs. I do have a functional boot disc and thumb drive of OSX Lion, however, when I start the mini, and hold "C" or "alt" I get nothing no boot menus, just a gray screen with a flashing folder and question mark. Where do I go from here? I've also tried "cmd+alt+shift+del". Is there a way to get this to work?
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Mac Mini HDD Replacement
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I'm assuming it's an older mini? If it is as its powing up hold c and slap the disk in. If nothing happens reboot with the disk in.
I'm assuming it's an older mini? If it is as its powing up hold c and slap the disk in. If nothing happens reboot with the disk in.
It is an older mini (Circa 2006), if I boot holding "c" I get a folder with a question mark that changes to a circle with a slash through it. I'm a PC convert, damn, if I could just tell this thing where to boot. Not being able to see any sort of POST report, really bugs me.
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Hold down Command+Option+P+R right after the startup sound and keep all 4 keys down till you hear 2 more startup sounds.
Then try command + c
Hold down Command+Option+P+R right after the startup sound and keep all 4 keys down till you hear 2 more startup sounds.
Then try command + c
I hit and held the keys as soon as I heard the startup sound. The mac then went to the folder with a question mark again, timed out and shut itself down.
I've held them on boot, and get the same issue. If I remove the motherboard battery, will that essentially do the same thing? Remove, wait 10 mins, and reinstall?
Problem solved. I used the Mac Remote, to access the boot menu and boot from USB. Apparently, the earlier gen Mac Minis do not like the A1243 slim aluminum keyboards. I read in another thread on Apple's support communities, that these later gen keyboards on an ealier generation Mini, do not power up until the OS loads. I tested the idea with a cheap Windows USB keyboard and it worked. SSD is running. Very, very quickly.
omg, that was probably my problem too. I also have a thin aluminum keyboard (wired) and was trying to get to the boot menu with "C" on my older 06 mini =)
glad you got it working!