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keysofanxiety

macrumors G3
Nov 23, 2011
9,539
25,302
Try a PRAM reset: hold CMD + ALT + P + R when you next turn it on. Press and hold these keys down until you hear the Apple boot chime 3 times then let go. Any luck?
 

keysofanxiety

macrumors G3
Nov 23, 2011
9,539
25,302
Still no luck. I am desperate :(

Hold CMD + R on startup. Do you see anything?

If it boots into macOS Utilities, select Reinstall macOS and point it to your Macintosh HD partition. This will not delete any existing data or applications. It will just reinstall the core OS components.

If not, does holding CMD + ALT + R on startup do anything?
 

onejed1

macrumors newbie
Jun 15, 2007
26
1
I have a mac mini 2011 the one with the dedicated AMD graphics card. I've tried twice to update to the latest sierra update 10.12.4 and it stays stuck at the grey screen with apple logo with about 80% of the progress bar filled, after the upgrade. After waiting 4 hours i tried to trouble shoot but in the end i had to reinstall from the recovery drive and a time machine backup.

In short, both attempts resulted in the same problem, however contrary to OP i was able to see my screen. After restoring from time machine backup i am sticking with 10.12.3 until this is fixed, which might take a while. Apple tends to ignore this machine a little bit. I had an issue in the past with an update that broke the HDMI drivers for my specific Mac Mini (the only intel mac mini that ever had a dedicated graphics card), and it took apple a while and some convincing before they fixed it. Myself and other owners of the same model mac mini were filing bug reports.

If you have a backup i would suggest you try to restore like i did. Hold option when booting up and see if you can see the screen and select your recovery drive.
 

Boyd01

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 21, 2012
7,689
4,572
New Jersey Pine Barrens
Same thing happened on the 2012 mini I gave my daughter's family when it tried to auto-update to 10.12.2. I finally had to talk my son in law through restoring a time machine backup on the phone. See this for some possible solutions: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/black-screen-after-update-to-10-12-2-imac.2021483/

And I just visited them yesterday, they had a new problem with the mini, the time machine disk had become corrupt and was (apparently) causing the machine to hang. Reformatted and it seemed to be OK. Not so impressed with Sierra so far, that same machine ran for a year on 10.8 and two years on 10.9 with no problems. ;)
 

lasniko

macrumors member
Original poster
May 24, 2015
97
6
I fugured out the problem but no the solution.

The problem is the two thunderbolt ports. I had my monitor connected via mini display port adaptor to vga.

After the update the monitor seems dead (it is working if connected to another computer).

After connecting the mini via hdmi to another monitor everything is ok.

So my concern is what happened to the two thunderbolt ports.

Any ideas?

Thank you.
 

pooooder

macrumors newbie
Nov 22, 2008
2
0
I fugured out the problem but no the solution.

The problem is the two thunderbolt ports. I had my monitor connected via mini display port adaptor to vga.

After the update the monitor seems dead (it is working if connected to another computer).

After connecting the mini via hdmi to another monitor everything is ok.

So my concern is what happened to the two thunderbolt ports.

Any ideas?

Thank you.

lasniko--
I had the same issue with my 2014 Mac Mini and an Apple's mini display to VGA with no display showing. I was able to remote desktop in the the mini with my Macbook Pro but when I did it showed that I had 6 different displays hooked up. But really only had just one monitor.

The way that I fixed it was I had an Apple Mini Display to DVI and plugged it to the other thunderbolt when the mini was still powered on and then I rebooted the mini a couple of times and all of a sudden the monitor was working for both the DVI and the VGA adapter. I was able to remove the DVI adapter and left the vga one in after this without any issues.

It was really weird.

Hope that helps you out.
 

lasniko

macrumors member
Original poster
May 24, 2015
97
6
I found a solution! I use it via HDMI cable and everything looks fine!

I still worry about the thunderbolt/mini display ports and why suddenly stopped working!
 
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