PRAM Reset makes 2018 Mac mini unbootable

[russell_314]

Just as a word of caution if you’re thinking of resetting your PRAM make sure you have a back up. I mean make sure you have a back up all the time but in this particular case I did that to my 2018 Mac mini and it would not boot. I got the lovely “Your computer restarted because of a problem” message then the circle with a line through it.

Hopefully the time machine restore makes it bootable but I’ll know in four hours 😂

 

[joevt]

Reseting PRAM shouldn't affect your macOS installation. Therefore, all you should have to do is hold option key at boot and reselect macOS.

 

[russell_314]

Great now after the Time Machine restore I have a smaller circle with a line through it 😂

 

[russell_314]

Reseting PRAM shouldn't affect your macOS installation. Therefore, all you should have to do is hold option key at boot and reselect macOS.

No I tried that. It just shows up the hard drive and when I select that I get the same failure. I also tried the first aid option for the disc

 

[joevt]

Is it Catalina or Big Sur?
Was File Vault involved?

Boot the installer and enable verbose boot by adding -v to boot-args NVRAM variable in Terminal.app.

Or try new fresh install and migrate from old install?

 

[Nermal]

Boot the installer and enable verbose boot by adding -v to boot-args NVRAM variable in Terminal.app.

Or just hold Cmd-V at the boot chime.

 

[russell_314]

Is it Catalina or Big Sur?
Was File Vault involved?

Boot the installer and enable verbose boot by adding -v to boot-args NVRAM variable in Terminal.app.

Or try new fresh install and migrate from old install?

Big Sur and no file vault. Not sure how to do that. If all else fails I’ll do a fresh install.

 

[russell_314]

Or just hold Cmd-V at the boot chime.

I will try that

 

[russell_314]

Or just hold Cmd-V at the boot chime.

I did and this popped up. After that it goes back to the circle with a line through it. I think I killed it. Oh well it looks like this is an excuse to buy a new M1 Mac mini 😂

 

[Nermal]

Impressive. Google has zero hits for efi_harvest_volume_keys!

 

[russell_314]

I had to do the reinstall from the recovery menu. Now I know not to mess with clearing the PRAM 😂

 

[DeltaMac]

I'm guessing a corrupted Big Sur system, likely related to that T2 chip.
Try booting to a Big Sur installer (not through the recovery system, but an actual bootable external installer)
Reinstall Big Sur.

Were you having a particular problem where you needed to do an NVRAM reset in the first place?