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Just started ... Mac mini restarts twice on cold boot before going to desktop!

GameGuru38

GameGuru38

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 7, 2009
148
9
Ohio
Ok I have had my 2011 Mac mini for a couple weeks now and it has been rock solid. It is the i5 2.5GHz version with the Radeon HD 6630m. I have 8GB RAM and a Samsung 256GB SSD. All of a sudden a week ago I went to start it (I shut it down every night) and it was on the Apple screen with the progress bar filling and it went black and rebooted (that was the second BONG). It got to the say screen and started progress and rebooted again (third BONG) and this time it booted up to desktop. It does this every single cold boot now.

What can I do?
 
Hold down Command-V for verbose mode a text boot hopefully you will see where it is having the problem, you should do this for the second/third time as well to see what is happening there too.

Edit: To be clearer you hold the keys down after pressing the start button before you hear the first bong.
 
Everytime in the last week or so. I am gonna try what MacUser2525 said when I get a chance.
 
Makes you wonder why the guy you bought it from sold it......

I just purchased a 2010 Mac Mini but before I put a SSD in it I'm letting it run on the original HD for a couple weeks to make sure it isn't a lemon.
 
It is probably a hardware defect. But to just rule that out, you could install a fresh copy of the OS on an external drive and boot from that & see what happens. Or boot from a USB installer & see if the problem persists.
 
That's what happened to one of my Mac mini 2011. First few times, can't use 6630m (the bar is about 3/4 full), then boot with intel hd3000 ok. I downloaded a software called gfxstatus and true enough, when the machine is trying to switch to nvidia (watching a 1080 youtube) after a few seconds, it will reboot. rebake and works for a while but the same problem always comes back.

On windows, I can disable the 6630m in the control panel -> Device Mananger and just use HD3000. But I can't seem to lock it in HD3000 in OSX.
 
Wow I didn't know my Mac mini had both the 6630m and an HD 3000. So do you think it is switching to the HD 3000 when it reboots twice? If I was to go to About This Mac when I get home will it say the current video card it is using or just always say 6630m?
 
GameGuru38 said:
Wow I didn't know my Mac mini had both the 6630m and an HD 3000. So do you think it is switching to the HD 3000 when it reboots twice? If I was to go to About This Mac when I get home will it say the current video card it is using or just always say 6630m?
Click to expand...
Mac Minis don't do graphics switching in OS X; if the computer has a 6630m, it will always use it.
 
GameGuru38 said:
Ok I am confused then by what Kaida said.
Click to expand...
So am I. The Mini doesn't have an Nvidia GPU, and the GFXCardStatus app doesn't run on Minis.
I suspect that in Windows, the Radeon GPU is actually not disabled as it seems to be.
It'd be more productive to see what the computer shows on the verbose (command-v) boot and also to look for any logs that might point to the problem.
 
Have you recently added a new USB device to it? I used to have a similar issue (automatic reboot while cold booting—just one more bong though, unlike you) with an old Keyspan usa-28x USB to Serial Port adapter when I upgraded to El Capitan, it did fine with older versions of OS X.
 
MacUser2525 said:
Hold down Command-V for verbose mode a text boot hopefully you will see where it is having the problem, you should do this for the second/third time as well to see what is happening there too.

Edit: To be clearer you hold the keys down after pressing the start button before you hear the first bong.
Click to expand...


Ok I do this but the info flys by so fast I can't read a line and it reboots. It now reboots up to 8 times before finally launching. And I did a clean format and install. How do I stop of slow down that Verbose so I can see what's wrong?
 
GameGuru38 said:
Ok I do this but the info flys by so fast I can't read a line and it reboots. It now reboots up to 8 times before finally launching. And I did a clean format and install. How do I stop of slow down that Verbose so I can see what's wrong?
Click to expand...

Take a video and watch it in slow-mo.
 
for this said:
Take a video and watch it in slow-mo.
Click to expand...

Yeah I tried that but while holding the phone or ipad mini to record I am not getting it in verbose mode argh. It is now booting up to eight times before it will load to desktop. Once it loads everything works perfect and I could just leave it on 24/7 I guess but hate to do that as my main computer which doubles as my Plex server already is.

Is there some type of software I can get to diagnose this issue?
 
upload_2017-4-8_11-58-28.png

Does this explain anything? Doesn't to me.
[doublepost=1491667151][/doublepost]Here is a little more ...

upload_2017-4-8_11-59-34.png

[doublepost=1491667245][/doublepost]And here is the last thing before the reboot ...

upload_2017-4-8_12-1-8.png
 
Anyone have any idea what could be causing this. It is now taking 8 or so boots to get to desktop and now I have noticed if I leave it inactive for a while it will reboot.

What diagnostic software can I install to troubleshoot this? Links?
 
I held down "D" and entered the diagnostics and ran them and they said no issues found. Why does it keep rebooting then?
 
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