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Kernel Panics on Startup - Endless Loop El Cap

Wild-Bill

Wild-Bill

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jan 10, 2007
2,539
617
bleep
Ok,

So my beloved 2012 Mini may be dying? Not sure. At some point, El Cap was updated to the latest version.
I went to wake the Mini from sleep (at this time, it was connected to an HDTV via HDMI). There was a frozen Apple icon with a progress bar about halfway through. Several hard reboots and it just would not boot. There was also no startup chime, couldn't get into Recovery.

Took the thing apart, placed the OS drive in an external enclosure and tried to boot to that SSD from another Mac Mini - no joy. Tried to re-install El Cap on the SSD (it was in a Thermaltake BlackX USB 3.0 hub thing), but apparently this Samsung EVO 840 didn't like being connected externally, and wouldn't take the OS upgrade.

I gave in, pulled both Minis apart and put the suspect SSD into the 2014 Mini. Booted from a thumb drive, reinstalled El Cap over top of my existing install, rebooted, no problems.

Took the SSD out of the 2014 Mini, and put the 2012 Mini back together again. Now, when the SSD is in the 2012 Mini, It gets to the Apple boot screen and instant kernel panic, related to the Airport Broadcom drivers, it seems. I CANNOT boot from a USB drive, I cannot do recovery (CMD-R), I tried CMD-OPT-P-R to no avail, and I even held down the D key for the Apple Hardware test. Test came back clean.

Attached are screenshots of the kernel panics. I hope someone knows what to do here. My only alternative is to swap the SSD's again and mourn the 2012 Mini quietly. I'd rather have the 2012 Quad core with 16GB of RAM running than this 2014 dual-core Mini.

Help???


IMG_7181.JPG IMG_7182.JPG
 
Last edited:
craig1024 said:
Did you try Apple hardware test?
Click to expand...

Thanks. I sure did. Came back clean. In fact, the only option I can get to work when I try to boot is the hardware test. Booting into recovery mode doesn't work, can't boot to a thumb drive, nothing. The Apple logo appears with the progress bar underneath it, and 3-5 seconds later the kernel panic happens as you can see on the screenshots, right over top of the Apple logo.

Holding down the "option" key during boot gives me the different boot disk options, but when you look under wireless networks, there are none listed, just one option with three "...". No wireless network names at all.

I'm wondering if maybe the Airport/Bluetooth card has somehow gone bad, but if that were the case, why wouldn't the hardware test tell me that?

I know it's not the SSD - that's working now in my 2014 Mini. I know its not the memory. I tried with the 16GB of Crucial I have, swapped those out with the original Apple RAM, tried one stick of each, still the same outcome.
 
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Wild-Bill said:
Thanks. I sure did. Came back clean. In fact, the only option I can get to work when I try to boot is the hardware test. Booting into recovery mode doesn't work, can't boot to a thumb drive, nothing. The Apple logo appears with the progress bar underneath it, and 3-5 seconds later the kernel panic happens as you can see on the screenshots, right over top of the Apple logo.

Holding down the "option" key during boot gives me the different boot disk options, but when you look under wireless networks, there are none listed, just one option with three "...". No wireless network names at all.

I'm wondering if maybe the Airport/Bluetooth card has somehow gone bad, but if that were the case, why wouldn't the hardware test tell me that?

I know it's not the SSD - that's working now in my 2014 Mini. I know its not the memory. I tried with the 16GB of Crucial I have, swapped those out with the original Apple RAM, tried one stick of each, still the same outcome.
Click to expand...


I was having strange behaviour with my 2011 out of the blue. Try removing one of the RAM sticks and just using 1. Has worked for me might be worth a try.
 
Yes.

I have two boot arguments set in NVRAM (set whilst I ran Recovery OS) –

-v -x

– and the macOS startup volume is encrypted with Core Storage (FileVault 2), and the Command-S key combination does successfully snag the safe boot into single user mode if the key combination is timely in relation to the startup chime (specifically: before appearance of the prompt to unlock the startup volume).

At the single user mode command line prompt: exit does allow the Mac to continue booting in safe mode.

Side note

What's above is on a MacBookPro8,2 that has no battery, and no longer recognises its internal keyboard or trackpad, Peripherals are:
  1. an old wired extended Apple keyboard
  2. an old wired Apple Pro mouse using the hub of that keyboard
  3. the external hard disk drive with macOS, and its Recovery OS, connected to the rearmost USB port of the notebook.
 
grahamperrin said:
Yes.

I have two boot arguments set in NVRAM (set whilst I ran Recovery OS) –

-v -x

– and the macOS startup volume is encrypted with Core Storage (FileVault 2), and the Command-S key combination does successfully snag the safe boot into single user mode if the key combination is timely in relation to the startup chime (specifically: before appearance of the prompt to unlock the startup volume).

At the single user mode command line prompt: exit does allow the Mac to continue booting in safe mode.

Side note

What's above is on a MacBookPro8,2 that has no battery, and no longer recognises its internal keyboard or trackpad, Peripherals are:
  1. an old wired extended Apple keyboard
  2. an old wired Apple Pro mouse using the hub of that keyboard
  3. the external hard disk drive with macOS, and its Recovery OS, connected to the rearmost USB port of the notebook.
Click to expand...

I'm super confused by your post. Did you post this in the correct thread?
 
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At some point I'll try to boot the machine with the airport/bt card disconnected to see if it will boot, but for now the primary SSD is in another mini. Not sure why the hardware test wouldn't pick up on a bad airport.
 
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