Mac Mini will not boot up :(

[IceDigger]

I have a mac mini that will not boot up and I know nothing about macs to troubleshoot.

When I turn it on I hear the mac sound then it goes to a grey screen and then stays at that grey screen.

Any ideas?

 

[mcsenerd]

I'd try to zap the PRAM if it was me...

Command-Option-P-R while booting.

Then I might give repairing permissions a shot.

Boot off of your OS X cd/dvd and there's an option to do that in there...Have fun and good luck.

 

[valve1138]

Another vote for a PRAM zap.

 

[IceDigger]

Hmmm... don't have a mac keyboard hooked up to it

Just a cheapo pc usb keyboard so it does not have those keys.

Looking for the osx cd.....

 

[Nasty_Savage]

You can also boot into single user mode and repair the permissions that way. Just hold the s key down at boot up and it will give you instructions.

 

[Nasty_Savage]

And command is the windows key on a windows keyboard.

 

[swatbat]

What the others said is a good place to start. Then again if you are lazy you can always take it to a apple ceritifed repair center and make them fix it as that should be under warranty.

 

[illgiveumorality]

PRAM zap using the windows key for command and alt for option

 

[IceDigger]

There is a cd in there already. How do I get it out, no eject button and also no hole to stick a paperclip in like a normal cd drive.

 

[IceDigger]

Got it to boot up!

Took the cd drive totally out and it works now.

So where can I get a cheap cd drive for my mac mini? I think the warranty is voided since I upgraded the ram myself, the thing was a bitch to open.

 

[swatbat]

Places like macsales.com sell the dvd burner that will work in it. Otherwise I would take the thing to a apple service shop as you adding ram should not have voided the warranty as long as you didn't mess up the machine doing it. If in dought take it to a compusa or best buy(if best buy is apple certified now that they sell minis) and have them fix it. They would prob care less that you opened it although I don't see why apple would.

 

[Deific]

Just take it to any apple store. Like has been mentioned before, it doesn't matter that you added ram or opened it, as long as it wasn't damaged in the process you're fine.

If you need to remove the cd you can eject it by restarting and holding the mouse button down.
If that doesn't work, restart and hold down the apple (windows key), option, O (the letter o), F. Once it comes up with a bunch of text type:

eject cd

Press return and the cd should eject.

 

[The_Mage18]

Or power it up and hold Option and E and the disc will eject. I had this happen when I wiped the drive and tried to install just off the Tiger upgrade DVD. That was a fun boot/fail/reboot loop.

 

[Kris]

Before getting a new drive, startup into open firmware (command (apple key) + option + O + F at startup) and type in the following:
reset-nvram
reset-all

Try that. If it still doesn't work, try doing he PRAM like suggested and possibly the PMU. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300574 outlines how to reset PRAM and PMU in one troubleshooting step.

Usually, in my experience, if an optical drive isn't working correctly, resetting the nvram (the first suggestion) fixes it unless it's a hardware issue.

Another thing to try is to try safe boot. If you can startup in safe boot (holding down the shift key) you could try removing some startup items and see if any kernel extensions are very recent. If so, removing them could also solve the issue. (/System/Library/Extensions/ i think)

Of course what I mentioned is if it won't startup with the optical disc drive. If it didn't startup with it removed, then it would most likely be a software issue or bad HD but it doesn't appear to be so in this case.