Mini hangs on boot - must reinstall Mavericks every few weeks - Help!

[aplnub]

In December I picked up a new Mac Mini 2.6 GHz i7. I put in two crucial SSD's and 16 GB of Crucial ram.

Everything was working great. Until two weeks in, my Mac would not boot on a restart (made it to the Apple gray screen and the wheel just spins). I cloned my Carbon Copy Cloner backup on to the startup disk and everything was fine. This seemed like the fastest fix at the time.

Approximately two weeks later the same thing happens. This time I just reinstalled OSX over the existing installation and everything worked fine.

I removed one of the SSD's and returned it to crucial thinking that was the problem. I then moved to the second SSD.

I have the new Crucial SSD's 960 GB. I have ~500GB free.

Guess what, I am still having the problem.

Any ideas what is going on here? I am a LONG time Mac user and never experienced and intermittent problem like this that was so serious.

TIA

 

[leventozler]

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1492?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Try verbose mode when it happens.

 

[aplnub]

Will do. I will wait this out again and give that a try. Thank you!

I should add just for informational purposes that Safe Boot fails to boot when my mini decides to hang on boot.

 

[chown33]

Have you run a hardware test since installing either the SSDs or the RAM?

If the RAM is malfunctioning intermittently, then data can be corrupted, and that data then written to disk. This eventually can lead to disks that are so damaged the data on them is unrecoverable.

If the disks accurately preserve data that's been corrupted when it's in RAM, then the disks are working correctly, even though the symptom is disk damage. This is one reason people don't think of malfunctioning RAM as a cause when seeing disk damage.

Apple Hardware Test : http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1509
Using Apple Diagnostics : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5781

 

[aplnub]

I have just completed the Apple Hardware Test (both short and long versions) and both passed with no trouble.

Anything else I can check?

Data on the SSD does not seem affected.

I have uninstalled Adobe CS3 just because.

 

[-Tobi-]

try to reset nvram like described here: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
after booting up, re-set the startup disk via system preferences > startup disk

 

[aplnub]

I reset the NVRAM and bam, it hung on restart. I then tried to start up in Verbose mode. No dice.

I have an appointment with the Genius bar tomorrow. I am at my wits end with this thing.

 

[chown33]

I reset the NVRAM and bam, it hung on restart. I then tried to start up in Verbose mode. No dice.

I have an appointment with the Genius bar tomorrow. I am at my wits end with this thing.

Take your original HD and RAM with you.

If your new SSD and RAM are defective in some way, then swapping back to the originals might show that by working. If the originals work, then that suggests something is wrong with the replacements. The AHT can succeed if RAM has an intermittent (infrequently occurring) problem.

 

[aplnub]

It is hanging up during the disk check. They were stumped. They wiped my drive, reinstalled Mavericks, evidently because they don't trust anyone who says they have done it, and sent me home. I told them I would see them in a few days.

 

[raidersfan]

Same thing is happening to my Mid 2012 Mac Book Pro -R. Within the last two weeks I have had to reformat and reinstall the OS twice. It just happened again today, so now is the third time.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

Do you run VMWare?

 

[raidersfan]

I run bootcamp. But i did have vmware installed.

 

[aplnub]

Yes I run VMWare 6.

I have been to the Genius bar twice now. This last time they kept it and ran "extensive" diagnostics on it. They said it was software. I did a "selective migration", no applications or anything like that. I chose to import just one small item.

It hung on boot up within the hour.

Anyone have any ideas?

----------

I have VMWare 6 installed. I rarely if ever run it. Just to clarify.

 

[leventozler]

Yes I run VMWare 6.

I have been to the Genius bar twice now. This last time they kept it and ran "extensive" diagnostics on it. They said it was software. I did a "selective migration", no applications or anything like that. I chose to import just one small item.

It hung on boot up within the hour.

Anyone have any ideas?

----------

I have VMWare 6 installed. I rarely if ever run it. Just to clarify.

Try the verbose mode & take a picture of the screen. It might give an idea why it hangs.

 

[SoCalReviews]

Yes I run VMWare 6.

I have been to the Genius bar twice now. This last time they kept it and ran "extensive" diagnostics on it. They said it was software. I did a "selective migration", no applications or anything like that. I chose to import just one small item.

It hung on boot up within the hour.

Anyone have any ideas?

----------

I have VMWare 6 installed. I rarely if ever run it. Just to clarify.

It likely could be the Crucial SSDs. I thought I read in this or another forum about someone else having issues with their system "hanging" after installing Mavericks on an SSD. I'm not an expert on SSDs so don't quote me on this but... as I remember there is a way to clear the special SSD boot sector or maybe it was the volume sector? (not sure what it's called) before re-installing Mavericks and that seemed to solve the problem.

 

[cal6n]

It likely could be the Crucial SSDs. *snip*

I doubt this is relevant. I'm running Mavericks on a Mac Pro 3.33 GHz hex with a home-made fusion drive (Crucial M4) and a 13" non-retina Macbook Pro with an SSD (Crucial M500). Both Macs are running flawlessly.