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alehandroGR

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 15, 2022
7
0
I own a Mac Mini (mid 2011) running High Sierra. I upgraded it with an SSD and 6GBs of RAM and I use it solely as a HTPC running Plex.

I always leave it on, even when TV is switched off.

Few weeks ago I returned home and heard the fan running like crazy while there was no signal on the TV. I shut it down (power button) and when I tried to restarted it, it did the same thing a number of times:
Got in the progress bar quite fast, started filling it till the middle and then restarted and then the same thing over again...

I tried different things like getting the power cable off and on, removing the ethernet and the keyboard and combinations of these.

At some point it restarted normally and everything was fine....after maybe 10-15 times

Since then, it did the same thing 4-5 times....noise from the fan...no signal...restarting..etc.

It always get back to normal but I'm concerned that, eventually, it wont.

I tried to run diagnostics but can't get to that screen ("d" during boot) at all.

Any suggestions on what I can look into?

Thank you!
 
11 year old computer on its last leg. Try to get it booted up long enough to get your data off of it then retire it. Time for a newer Mini.
 
When I used my Mac Mini 2014 as a plex server it would crash 2-3 times a week, black screen, unresponsive, probably some transcoding or maintenance task forcing the cpu/gpu a lot more than it was able to keep up with, mine suffered a lot with h265 files since native support only become available in 6th gen intel, you could hear the fans screamming.

Also, tried to see if it's not overheating because of dried up thermal paste or something, preventing it from booting because of excessive heat?
 
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