Mac Mini Won't Boot

[Jay42]

Unfortunately I bumped the switch on the power strip that my Mac Mini (1.42ghz G4, OS X 10.3) is plugged into while it was running. Now it won't boot up. All I get is the gray screen with the gray apple logo and the spinning wheel but no OSX. Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[Reflow]

Unfortunately I bumped the switch on the power strip that my Mac Mini (1.42ghz G4, OS X 10.3) is plugged into while it was running. Now it won't boot up. All I get is the gray screen with the gray apple logo and the spinning wheel but no OSX. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Boot it up with your restore cd and run disk utility

 

[Eidorian]

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

 

[Telp]

Put the installation CD in and boot up in Disk mode. Do a repair disk and also repair disk permissions.

 

[Jay42]

I was able to boot to the OSX CD and do a disc repair and repair permissions, but it didn't seem to help. It still won't boot from the HD. Could this be a PMU issue?

 

[frankblundt]

you might also give zapping the PRAM a go. and re-"blessing" the start-up drive by choosing it from the Startup Disk on the install disk.

Running fsck -fy from Single User mode wouldn't hurt either

Resetting the PMU is a last resort, explained here

 

[Jay42]

you might also give zapping the PRAM a go. and re-"blessing" the start-up drive by choosing it from the Startup Disk on the install disk.

I did both of these, but it didn't seem to help

Running fsck -fy from Single User mode wouldn't hurt either

I tried this but I actually wasn't able to succesfully boot into single user mode. There was a bunch of stuff on the screen that I didn't understand. Never got to a command prompt.

Resetting the PMU is a last resort, explained here

I actually tried this. Didn't help.

 

[frankblundt]

ouch. any chance of taking a photo of what comes up on the screen in Single User Mode and posting it?

 

[Jay42]

Ok, here's a pic of what I get when booting into single user mode (Apple-S). It sat like this for 20 minutes before I forced a shut down; never got to a command prompt. Some of the text is cut off so I can take another pic if necessary. Thanks for everyones' help, but I have a feeling I'm gonna have to blast this system and reinstall.

PS: Let me know if the image doesn't show up

 

[Reflow]

Ok, here's a pic of what I get when booting into single user mode (Apple-S). It sat like this for 20 minutes before I forced a shut down; never got to a command prompt. Some of the text is cut off so I can take another pic if necessary. Thanks for everyones' help, but I have a feeling I'm gonna have to blast this system and reinstall.

PS: Let me know if the image doesn't show up

no image yet

 

[Jay42]

Hopefully this will work better:

 

[Eidorian]

Sounds like bad news for Mach. I recommend an archive and install.

The biggest cause seems to be a failed update installation though.

 

[Jay42]

Sounds like bad news for Mach. I recommend an archive and install.

The biggest cause seems to be a failed update installation though.

Oh, you know what, you're exactly right. I was installing updates and bumped the power switch before I could restart.

 

[undelsol]

my mac mini wont boot at all now

I'm pretty sure most of you guys would know of ifixit, I used their manuels to upgrade my mini's ram (this was one of the older models that only came with 1gig of ram) so I folowed the instructuons perfectly and after it was done my mac had 4gig of ram, but all I get when I try to turn it on is a beep then turn off, then it turns itself back on and beeps again. I'm assuming that it keeps beeping till it burns out, but I don't know at this point because right after the second beep I unpluged the comp. Anybody... can you guys tell me what the **** I did?

 

[flopticalcube]

What model of mini is it? If you have a Core Solo or Core Duo, it will not boot with a 2GB stick installed.