Eek! Mini problem

[Hibbity]

I bought a mini in february, and installed an ebay-bought stick of ram that went bad, predictably. It worked all right for about three months, then apps would randomly crash, etc. Then finally, last week, it just went kaput. Then yesterday I bought and installed a gig stick from crucial, and i'm getting a bizarre result. When i start the computer, the grey apple with the white background comes up, then the "welcome to macintosh" thing, and then it gets weird. After about 2 seconds of the welcome to macintosh, it fades out, leaving only the blue screen and the little rotating dial. Than it goes to a black screen, and at the top it says (assuming my name is Bat Masterson):

Darwin/BSD (Bat-Mastersons-Computer.local) (console)
login:


After asking for the login it asks for my password beneath the login. I know my password, but what is my login?

My real question is, how's my computer? This doesn't seem healthy. Any input, other than that i should have had apple install the ram, is welcome and appreciated.

 

[bousozoku]

It would be the short name that you usually set up in Mac OS X or in this case, I believe BatMaste.

 

[ravenvii]

That's single user mode, otherwise known as the console or terminal. Things have indeed gone wrong. Try rebooting (login, then type "reboot"). If it still comes up to the console, reboot and insert the hardware test DVD that (should have) came with your mini. Let it run and see if it reports any errors. If it doesn't, then your OS X installation may be borked. Dig out your OS X installation DVD, and do a erase/install. If THAT doesn't work, then it's time to call Crucial or Apple up.

 

[iEdd]

*kisses apple certified RAM bought from macmall and pats G5*

 

[Hibbity]

so now i logged into darwin, and it says "welcome to darwin! i typed in "reboot" in the command line and it said "operation not permitted" what should i do now?

 

[Arcus]

so now i logged into darwin, and it says "welcome to darwin! i typed in "reboot" in the command line and it said "operation not permitted" what should i do now?

Hold down the power button.


But first stick in that CD!

 

[jMc]

so now i logged into darwin, and it says "welcome to darwin! i typed in "reboot" in the command line and it said "operation not permitted" what should i do now?

Or try sudo reboot (you'll be prompted for your password again)

Jx

 

[ravenvii]

Yep, whenever they tell you you can't do something, tell it to stuff it with a "sudo". That stands for "super user do", which gives you temporary root privileges. Do respect it through, you can do some major, major damage with root powers.

Eh, just hitting the power button would do the trick as well, but it's easier on the machine to do it software-side instead of hardware - data corruption and stuff, ya know?

 

[Hibbity]

ok so i ended up rebooting, which of course simply brought me back to the command line from earlier. How do i get it to just boot into the regular interface? people have sugested running the hardware test, but i had a dvd in the drive when the meltdown occured. Is there a darwin command to get it out?

 

[yellow]

diskutil eject

 

[Hibbity]

wow i hate this computer

ok that didn't work... it just spat a bunch of mumbo jumbo about the disk utility back at me. But hey, I did hear it spinning the dvd in the drive...cool...i even tried the "sudo diskutil eject" and got the same thing. Is there anything else I can do, or am I gonna have to send it in? If I could just somehow get that freakin' disk out of there, I could at least get some info from the hardware test...

*sigh*

 

[yellow]

Sorry.. WRONG command..

drutil eject

If that doesn't work, reboot and hold down the mouse button until it ejects the CD/DVD.

 

[Hibbity]

steady systematic decline

well i suppose its all gone to hell now. Here's what happens, I'm pretty sure the thing's toasted, along with two years of music and photos:

Start up, white screen with grey apple

"welcome to macintosh --> checking disks --> network configuration"

fades out, goes to darwin for three seconds, returns to blue screen with rotating dial

....and stays like that until you finally give up and power off.



I know there's probably nothing more I can do now, but I just want to check before I take it in and have the apple folks look at it. Anything you can throw my way would be great. Thanks all

 

[ravenvii]

well i suppose its all gone to hell now. Here's what happens, I'm pretty sure the thing's toasted, along with two years of music and photos:

Start up, white screen with grey apple

"welcome to macintosh --> checking disks --> network configuration"

fades out, goes to darwin for three seconds, returns to blue screen with rotating dial

....and stays like that until you finally give up and power off.



I know there's probably nothing more I can do now, but I just want to check before I take it in and have the apple folks look at it. Anything you can throw my way would be great. Thanks all

Well, did you try holding down the mouse button as you boot? That would take the DVD out, and you can then boot into hardware test.

 

[Mechcozmo]

Restart and hold the T button down for FireWire Target Disk mode.

Mac becomes hard drive... plug into other Mac for HD access.

 

[kalisphoenix]

Darwin/BSD (Bat-Mastersons-Computer.local) (console)
login:

That != single-user mode, for the record. The whole point of single-user mode is that you don't have to log in. For some reason, WindowServer doesn't seem to be starting.

Boot into single user mode, fsck the hard drive, mount it, and type <b>cat /var/log/crashreporter.log</b> and post that (at least the last few lines or lines that seem wrong/errorific. That'll give us an idea of what happened. Then cat /var/log/windowserver.log and anything else in /var/log.

 

[Hibbity]

That != single-user mode, for the record. The whole point of single-user mode is that you don't have to log in. For some reason, WindowServer doesn't seem to be starting.

Boot into single user mode, fsck the hard drive, mount it, and type <b>cat /var/log/crashreporter.log</b> and post that (at least the last few lines or lines that seem wrong/errorific. That'll give us an idea of what happened. Then cat /var/log/windowserver.log and anything else in /var/log.

That one went right over my head. I typed in all the things you said, but it didn't recognize any of the commands.


So I ran the hardware test and everything checked out ok. I tried running archive and install, but an error came up when it was checking out the volume for installation. Do I have to erase everything now? I have a ton of pictures and music on there, and some of it isn't backed up. Any ideas are warmly welcomed.

 

[Mechcozmo]

That one went right over my head. I typed in all the things you said, but it didn't recognize any of the commands.


So I ran the hardware test and everything checked out ok. I tried running archive and install, but an error came up when it was checking out the volume for installation. Do I have to erase everything now? I have a ton of pictures and music on there, and some of it isn't backed up. Any ideas are warmly welcomed.

Can you start it up in FireWire Target Disk mode? If so connect it to another Mac or bring it to an Apple Store to back up there. The geniuses tend to be nice about that, especially if you're getting AppleCare work done.

The actual command was cat /var/log/crashreporter.log because someone didn't know about vB code and tried to just get by with standard HTML tags....

 

[belvdr]

That != single-user mode, for the record. The whole point of single-user mode is that you don't have to log in. For some reason, WindowServer doesn't seem to be starting.

Boot into single user mode, fsck the hard drive, mount it, and type <b>cat /var/log/crashreporter.log</b> and post that (at least the last few lines or lines that seem wrong/errorific. That'll give us an idea of what happened. Then cat /var/log/windowserver.log and anything else in /var/log.

Actually, the whole point of single user mode is maintenance of a machine, without any daemons running. But I'm being anal, I know.

 

[Mord]

archive and install os x.

 

[YellowLabrador]

Try re sitting your RAM

Did you try to re sit your replacement RAM?

 

[MacTurtle]

I could be out in left field here, but when I've had something similure to this happen I rebooted to the cd (I forget which one) and ran a repair permissions. Then shut down and restarted without booting to the cd and everything came up okay.

If they are having problems reading the volumn during an archive/install, it sounds like his partition or rights on the partition are goofed up.

My 2 cents, worth everthing you paid for it.

Good luck