Mini won’t startup...

[b2387692]

Hello all,

When I turn on my Mini it doesn’t get past the initial white screen. The progress bar eventually looks like it’s 100% complete (see attachment) but it doesn’t get beyond that and won’t startup.

I tried the fix in this How To Fix White Screen On Your Mac video, but it did nothing.

Any ideas?

 

[rm5]

Try running First Aid (in Recovery obviously, since it won't get past the progress bar) on the ENTIRE hard disk, and then just on "Macintosh HD" or whatever the boot partition is called.

If this doesn't work, try reinstalling macOS.

Let me know if this works.

 

[OCLP76]

PRAM and SMC resets are a great place to start. I’d recommend booting into safe mode as well. This will give you a clear picture of what’s holding up the boot process: either it’s a kext that needs replacing/disabling or you’ve got a hardware issue.

 

[DeltaMac]

What is the hard drive configuration? Do you have the original dual hard drives installed?

 

[rm5]

What is the hard drive configuration? Do you have the original dual hard drives installed?

Good point, @DeltaMac , I forgot to mention that.

 

[b2387692]

Try running First Aid (in Recovery obviously, since it won't get past the progress bar) on the ENTIRE hard disk, and then just on "Macintosh HD" or whatever the boot partition is called.

If this doesn't work, try reinstalling macOS.

Let me know if this works.

What is the hard drive configuration? Do you have the original dual hard drives installed?

Thanks!

I’m not familiar with running First Aid in Recovery, so any guidance here would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, I have the original dual hard drives.

 

[b2387692]

PRAM and SMC resets are a great place to start. I’d recommend booting into safe mode as well. This will give you a clear picture of what’s holding up the boot process: either it’s a kext that needs replacing/disabling or you’ve got a hardware issue.

Thanks!

Forgive my ignorance, but I have no idea what PRAM and SMC are, let alone how to reset them.

That said, are you recommending to do this before trying to run First Aid in Recovery?

 

[DeltaMac]

To run first aid on the hard drive...
Boot while holding Command-r
You will boot to a menu screen. One of the choices will be Disk Utility. Launch Disk Utility.
Choose your hard drive, and click the First Aid icon.
There's a good chance this won't work, because the recovery system partition is on the same hard drive as your boot system, so if the hard drive is failing, the Recovery system may not be available - so...
Try booting to Internet Recovery, same method. Reboot, while holding Option-Command-r.
This time, you should see a spinning globe (not an Apple icon). This can take several minutes, so be patient. Your Mac is booting to Apple's remote server, so you also have to be connected to your internet connection.
When finished booting, you should get a similar menu screen. Choose Disk Utility, and look for your hard drive - select your hard drive, then click the First Aid icon, and continue with that First Aid.
Any luck yet?
SMC reset on your mini is just unplugging the power cord for a few seconds, then plug back in.
PRAM (NVRAM) reset: Restart or boot while holding Option-Command-p-r.
You will hear the boot chime sound.
Continue to hold the same 4 keys until you hear the boot chime 2 more times, then release the keys to allow a normal boot. The NVRAM reset clears the default boot setting, so when you are able to get to the System Preferences, you want to make sure your boot drive is selected as the default.

The order that you do the resets doesn't matter too much. The Disk Utility will probably be the most important, as you may discover that the drive is failing (or not visible at all because it has already failed...)

 

[Fishrrman]

What year is this Mini?
What kind of drive is inside?
What version of the OS were you using?

 

[b2387692]

To run first aid on the hard drive...
Boot while holding Command-r
You will boot to a menu screen. One of the choices will be Disk Utility. Launch Disk Utility.
Choose your hard drive, and click the First Aid icon.
There's a good chance this won't work, because the recovery system partition is on the same hard drive as your boot system, so if the hard drive is failing, the Recovery system may not be available - so...
Try booting to Internet Recovery, same method. Reboot, while holding Option-Command-r.
This time, you should see a spinning globe (not an Apple icon). This can take several minutes, so be patient. Your Mac is booting to Apple's remote server, so you also have to be connected to your internet connection.
When finished booting, you should get a similar menu screen. Choose Disk Utility, and look for your hard drive - select your hard drive, then click the First Aid icon, and continue with that First Aid.
Any luck yet?
SMC reset on your mini is just unplugging the power cord for a few seconds, then plug back in.
PRAM (NVRAM) reset: Restart or boot while holding Option-Command-p-r.
You will hear the boot chime sound.
Continue to hold the same 4 keys until you hear the boot chime 2 more times, then release the keys to allow a normal boot. The NVRAM reset clears the default boot setting, so when you are able to get to the System Preferences, you want to make sure your boot drive is selected as the default.

The order that you do the resets doesn't matter too much. The Disk Utility will probably be the most important, as you may discover that the drive is failing (or not visible at all because it has already failed...)

Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to post all of that.

As suggested, I booted holding Command-r and booted to a menu screen where I launched Disk Utility, so here’s where I’m at.

I appear to have three choices in Disk Utility; under “Internal,” there’s “Macintosh HD2” & “Server HD”, then under “Disk Images,” there’s “OS X Base System”.

Which do I select before clicking on First Aid?

 

[b2387692]

Try running First Aid (in Recovery obviously, since it won't get past the progress bar) on the ENTIRE hard disk, and then just on "Macintosh HD" or whatever the boot partition is called.

If this doesn't work, try reinstalling macOS.

Let me know if this works.

Again, forgive my ignorance, but I appear to have three choices in Disk Utility; under “Internal,” there’s “Macintosh HD2” & “Server HD”, then under “Disk Images,” there’s “OS X Base System”.

Which is the “ENTIRE hard disk” and which is the “boot partition”?

 

[DeltaMac]

On that Disk Utility screen - click the "View" icon, and choose "Show all Devices". That will add the actual hardware devices to that list. You can ignore the OS X Base System, which is the recovery system that you are booted from.

With Show All Devices selected, choose each hardware device under "Internal", and run First Aid on both.
(The device is the line that shows the hard drive description, such as the model number and size.

 

[b2387692]

On that Disk Utility screen - click the "View" icon, and choose "Show all Devices". That will add the actual hardware devices to that list. You can ignore the OS X Base System, which is the recovery system that you are booted from.

With Show All Devices selected, choose each hardware device under "Internal", and run First Aid on both.
(The device is the line that shows the hard drive description, such as the model number and size.

Thanks!

There was one device added to the list for each HD under “Internal”. They both have the same description i.e number & size. Unless I’m doing something wrong, it appears that I can only select one device at a time. I tried selecting one, holding down the shift key and selecting the other but that didn’t let me select both at the same time.

That said, if as you suggest I “can ignore OS X Base System”, and going back to what @rm5 said about “running First Aid (in Recovery obviously, since it won't get past the progress bar) on the ENTIRE hard disk, and then just on "Macintosh HD,” how correct would I be in assuming that running First Aid on the device listed along with “Server HD” is the “ENTIRE hard disk”, and thus should be done first, then just the device listed along with “Macintosh HD”?

 

[DeltaMac]

I apologize - I did not mean to try to run First Aid on both hard drives at the same time, but to select each one, and run First Aid on each (one at a time)
You have two hard drives in your mini. That's how the mini server version shipped at that time, with 2 hard drives.
The important one is, of course, the drive that you usually use.
Which one do you normally boot from?
(Probably the "Macintosh HD2" (?) )

I could suggest that you can reinstall High Sierra (assuming the hard drive passes the First Aid utility), however, the Disk Utility shows that hard drive is still formatted as Mac OS Extended.
If you are running High Sierra as the boot system, I guess you have not updated to version 10.13.6 - as the hard drive would usually be converted to APFS automatically.
If you choose to reinstall High Sierra, then the hard drive will get converted as a result of the reinstall.
If you are OK with that, then go ahead with a reinstall. Keep in mind that a spinning hard drive is not a good match for the APFS format.

 

[b2387692]

I apologize - I did not mean to try to run First Aid on both hard drives at the same time, but to select each one, and run First Aid on each (one at a time)
You have two hard drives in your mini. That's how the mini server version shipped at that time, with 2 hard drives.
The important one is, of course, the drive that you usually use.
Which one do you normally boot from?
(Probably the "Macintosh HD2" (?) )

I could suggest that you can reinstall High Sierra (assuming the hard drive passes the First Aid utility), however, the Disk Utility shows that hard drive is still formatted as Mac OS Extended.
If you are running High Sierra as the boot system, I guess you have not updated to version 10.13.6 - as the hard drive would usually be converted to APFS automatically.
If you choose to reinstall High Sierra, then the hard drive will get converted as a result of the reinstall.
If you are OK with that, then go ahead with a reinstall. Keep in mind that a spinning hard drive is not a good match for the APFS format.

Not a problem, I must’ve misunderstood about trying to run First Aid on both at the same time.

Yes, I’m fairly certain that the drive I use most often as well as boot from is the “Macintosh HD2”.

To clarify, are you recommending to run First Aid on “Macintosh HD2” first, instead of as @rm5 says the “Entire hard drive,” which I’m assuming is “Server HD”?

As for the OS, I’m positive that I did updated to 10.13.6, but I can’t seem to be able to update the OS beyond that.

 

[DeltaMac]

I suspect that rm5 did not realize that you have two separate internal hard drives, thinking that you might have two partitions on a single hard drive. The "Server HD" is a completely separate hard drive.
High Sierra 10.13.6 is the highest version of that system. Your 2011 mini is limited to that version as the highest native version supported.
You CAN go beyond that. Search for "install unsupported macOS". Usually works well enough, if you truly want a newer OS.

 

[b2387692]

Well, I successfully ran First Aid on the device that’s listed with “Macintosh HD2”, BUT First Aid failed when I attempted to run it on “Macintosh HD2,” itself.

so...as @DeltaMac recommended, I am preparing to try “booting to Internet Recovery, same method. Reboot, while holding Option-Command-r.”

That said, I’m using a Logitech MX 3200 wireless keyboard, which doesn’t have a key labeled “option,” so I’m not really sure which key corresponds to that.

Anyone familiar?

 

[DeltaMac]

Option and Alt are the same key for this purpose
So, on the Logitech keyboard - restart holding Windows-Alt-r
That should work. You will see a rotating globe instead of the normal Apple icon.
If you don't see the spinning globe -- it's probably the keyboard. Wireless keyboards are not always accepted for the initial boot commands, or it's just too early in the boot for the RF radio to work on the USB dongle
If that happens, you will need to find a USB wired keyboard to use.

 

[b2387692]

Option and Alt are the same key for this purpose
So, on the Logitech keyboard - restart holding Windows-Alt-r
That should work. You will see a rotating globe instead of the normal Apple icon.
If you don't see the spinning globe -- it's probably the keyboard. Wireless keyboards are not always accepted for the initial boot commands, or it's just too early in the boot for the RF radio to work on the USB dongle
If that happens, you will need to find a USB wired keyboard to use.

Thanks!

Ok, got it. I’m assuming you’re going to recommend this again, so I went ahead and clicked on “Show all devices” and I’m back to this view.

Now, preparing to select each hard drive, and run First Aid on each (one at a time), but just to clarify, am I supposed to run First Aid on each device first, then the HD listed with it and in what order do I run First Aid?

 

[DeltaMac]

The sequence (when you test each line item) is just not important. The testing just needs to happen...
Here's what I do with First Aid. The device first. (depending on the configuration, the volume or volumes may be included in the test regardless of which you choose). Then, run first aid again on the volume (or if there are more than one volume on that device, test each volume)
In your case, there is only one volume on each drive. Each test will only take a couple of minutes.
The important issue is to run the test. All drives may pass with no problems found, or the test will report some kind of issue.
There's absolutely no reason to decide whether or not to run First Aid, it's a very simple test, the sequence that you use doesn't really matter -- you want to see the results.

 

[b2387692]

The sequence (when you test each line item) is just not important. The testing just needs to happen...
Here's what I do with First Aid. The device first. (depending on the configuration, the volume or volumes may be included in the test regardless of which you choose). Then, run first aid again on the volume (or if there are more than one volume on that device, test each volume)
In your case, there is only one volume on each drive. Each test will only take a couple of minutes.
The important issue is to run the test. All drives may pass with no problems found, or the test will report some kind of issue.
There's absolutely no reason to decide whether or not to run First Aid, it's a very simple test, the sequence that you use doesn't really matter -- you want to see the results.

Thanks!

Well, same thing happened; First Aid was successfully run on device listed with “Server HD”, as well as “Server HD,” itself and device listed with “Macintosh HD2”, BUT failed on “Macintosh HD2”, itself.

In failed attempt “Show Details” I noticed it says, among other things, “The volume Macintosh HD2 could not be verified completely”, “Problem -69842 occurred while restoring the original mount state”, “File system verify or repair failed”, and “Operation failed...”.

 

[DeltaMac]

More relevant to your situation is
"First Aid process has failed. If possible back up the data on the volume. Click done to continue"

So, your next step in regards to the Macintosh HD2, is to back up the drive (if you can)
You can then erase/format that drive -- although I'm not sure if I would trust that drive, so if you want to continue using your mini, I recommend replacing that drive.
And, as always, upgrading that drive with an SSD would leave that mini noticeably faster. Then, restore from your backup, if you wish.

 

[b2387692]

More relevant to your situation is
"First Aid process has failed. If possible back up the data on the volume. Click done to continue"

So, your next step in regards to the Macintosh HD2, is to back up the drive (if you can)
You can then erase/format that drive -- although I'm not sure if I would trust that drive, so if you want to continue using your mini, I recommend replacing that drive.
And, as always, upgrading that drive with an SSD would leave that mini noticeably faster. Then, restore from your backup, if you wish.

Thanks!

Obviously not good news. That said, this leaves me with questions...

1) Since I have two hard drives in my mini, why can’t I just switch to the “Server HD” to boot and use?

2) Sounds like it’s not worth backing up Macintosh HD2, but if I were to try and do so, how do I back it up and to where? FWIW: I do have a Western Digital My Passport Ultra (2 TB?) external hard drive.

3) As for replacing/upgrading the failed drive, I have a new old stock Crucial MX100 SSD (512GB), what kind of help would that be in my situation?

 

[DeltaMac]

1) Sure, why not? I was guessing, by the name, that you might have used that for file storage/archives.
What's on that drive now? If nothing important, you could easily back up the "crippled" hard drive to the other internal drive. What operating system is on that Server HD now? Is it still the original Lion Server system? Boot to that, then migrate your files from the crippled drive to the Server HD. There's a Migration Assistant in the Utilities folder.
If there's no system on that drive, then install whatever system you like. You would need to have a bootable installer for the system you want. Easy to make that after downloading the system that you want to use. I can give you some hints on how to go about doing that.

Another choice for moving the files from your dying drive would be Carbon Copy Cloner. Download that, it's free to use for a couple of weeks, giving you plenty of time to "make mistakes" .
That software is also a good choice for keeping your drive backed up, as you move forward.

"new old stock"? Do you mean still in the package/not used yet? That Crucial MX100 would be a very good choice to replace the old drive, and you will enjoy a noticeable speed increase in your mini after an upgrade to that SSD.
If you replace ONLY the Macintosh HD2, you will want to discover which bay that drive is located (Upper or Lower), so you don't replace the wrong drive. The Lower bay is much easier to replace, with less disassembly. You won't have to remove the power supply, for example. The lower bay is the drive that you can see first when opening the bottom cover on your mini. You can discover which bay that drive is located in the system, by opening the System Information app, then the SATA tab. You will see "Bay" listed with the other listings for the internal drive. Again, the Upper bay is significantly more challenging (more disassembly), compared to the Lower bay

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I have a new old stock Crucial MX100 SSD (512GB), what kind of help would that be in my situation?"

Is this SSD "in an enclosure" that you can plug into the USB3 port?

If not, GET an enclosure for it. Here's one:

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

SABRENT 2.5 Inch SATA to USB 3.0 Tool Free External Hard Drive Enclosure [Optimized for SSD, Support UASP SATA III] Black (EC-UASP)

www.amazon.com

Now, let's make it into an EXTERNAL boot drive.

Power off the Mini.

Connect the drive.

Press the power-on button and hold down this key combo:
Command-OPTION-R

This will boot you into INTERNET recovery (this is NOT THE SAME AS "the recovery partition").

When you get to the internet utilities (be patient), open disk utility.

Go to the view menu and choose "show all devices".
(If there is no view menu, just continue on, older installers don't have the view menu)

Locate the SSD in "the list on the left".
Click it and click ERASE.
If you're going to install High Sierra or earlier, erase to "Mac OS extended with journaling enabled", GUID partition format.
If you're going to install Mojave or later, erase to "APFS", GUID partition format.

When the erase is done, quit disk utility and open the OS installer.

Start clicking through.
When the installer asks WHERE you want to do install, BE SURE that you select the external SSD.

Continue on. The Mac will restart one or more times, and the screen will go dark for a minute or more with no other indication of activity. BE PATIENT.

When done, you should see the initial setup screen (choose your language).
Start clicking through.

You can either create a brand-new account if you wish,
OR...
You can use setup assistant to migrate data from one of the internal drives.

When done, go to the startup disk preference pane and select the external SSD to be the new boot drive.

I predict you will be PLEASED with the performance improvement.