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Mac Mini Won't Boot

A

ampedxc27

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 12, 2005
Messages
1,338
I've had my mac mini for about 2 and a half years and it's been great so far. I never really turn it off since it barely uses any energy and it takes a while to turn back on.

The other day I spilled soup on my wireless keyboard so I had to throw my keyboard away. Since I couldn't use my computer for a few days I turned it off and would turn it back on when I got my new keyboard.

Yesterday I got a new wired keyboard and set everything up, but the screen was stuck at the white screen with the spinning circle. I made sure the keyboard and mouse were plugged in, but it still wouldn't boot.

I ran disk utility from the restore disk and repaired permissions, but when i tried to repair the actual disk it came up with an error message. I reset the PMU and then tried running fsck -fy in single user mode. Got another error.

I was reading another thread about a problem like this and it said to archive and install osx. The only problem is my hard drive is completely filled up, "0 bytes available"...

I've tried everything and don't know what to do, does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks a lot for any help, I really appreciate it! :cool:


EDIT: Also, if this helps, it usually would take about 5 minutes plus just to start up normally. I felt there was something wrong with the hard drive so I figured I should back it all up. Time machine wouldn't back up all the files, and if it did work it took about an hour for 1gb or so.

This is a 1.66 core duo mini with 1 gb ram on 10.5.5. Thanks!
 
hmm if you have 0 bytes free *for real* that could be an issue.
Boot into single user mode and start deleting stuff you won't need.


If the disk is reporting 0 bytes free but you know that isn't right, then there is a larger problem and re-installing won't help
 
When using the computer I would start getting really low, but then I deleted a few movies and was up to the few hundred mb mark at least so I know there's at least a little space. How would I individually delete files though?
 
Did your computer happen to (attempt to) install any updates as you shut it down? It's possible that the updates ate up all of your free space. 10.5.6 recently came out and the installer can be a couple hundred MB.
 
OSX does weird things when the hard drive starts getting close to full. I always leave a few gigs of free space. A guy I used to work with said that less than 10GB was the point at which he noticed significant slowdowns, but I've never actually been that close.

If you have another Mac, boot it into target disk mode and backup your important files. Then you can do a clean install and start new.
 
I never got to put on 10.5.6. It asked me but when I tried to install it it said there wasn't enough free space. I guess I'll just have to target disk mode it and go from there. Also, if I'm going to put a clean install on it is there any way to check the hard drive to make sure it's good and error free? I know there's something like that on windows that people use on new drives to make sure they're ok.
Thanks for all the help!
 
ampedxc27 said:
Also, if I'm going to put a clean install on it is there any way to check the hard drive to make sure it's good and error free? I know there's something like that on windows that people use on new drives to make sure they're ok.
Thanks for all the help!
Click to expand...

Use disk utility and select "Verify disk" under the first aid tab.
 
Disk Utility is a good place to start but isn't completely adequate. I've seen suspect hard drives pass "verify disk" but then fail the more extensive tests included in Apple Service Diagnostics or Tech Tool Pro. Shoot me an email (spontec at bgsu.edu) and I can send you a copy of Apple Service Diagnostics for your Mac Mini. You might also boot your system into verbose mode (cmd v) and watch to see if any type of disk errors are reported during the boot process.
 
alternatively did you buy apple care?
If so in the box was tech tool (bootable cd), if not you might be able to get techtool pro from somewhere else.

Try running that and see what it says (could also be a hardware failure.)


I do agree 100% that OS X tends to act funny without a few gigs free.

Good luck
 
curtcheese64 said:
Disk Utility is a good place to start but isn't completely adequate. I've seen suspect hard drives pass "verify disk" but then fail the more extensive tests included in Apple Service Diagnostics or Tech Tool Pro. Shoot me an email (spontec at bgsu.edu) and I can send you a copy of Apple Service Diagnostics for your Mac Mini. You might also boot your system into verbose mode (cmd v) and watch to see if any type of disk errors are reported during the boot process.
Click to expand...


Tried to verify disk, said "1 volume could not be repaired because of an error" In red it says "invalid record count" and "the volume macintosh hd needs to be repaired" and "Error: the underlying task reported failure on exit."

When I try to repair the disk I get a similar message but it says "volume check failed" now.


muzzle79 said:
alternatively did you buy apple care?
If so in the box was tech tool (bootable cd), if not you might be able to get techtool pro from somewhere else.

Try running that and see what it says (could also be a hardware failure.)


I do agree 100% that OS X tends to act funny without a few gigs free.

Good luck
Click to expand...


Didn't buy apple care :-(
 
The other posters in this thread have the right idea.

What you should do, is find someone else you know that has a mac. Connect your computers with a firewire cable, and hold down the t key on your mac mini to boot it into target disk mode. This will allow you to mount your mini's hard drive on the other computer. Then you can buy and hook up an external USB hard drive to your friends computer and get your files off the mini. From there, you can either delete some files and attempt a archive and reinstall, or (recommended) a fresh install.

I would definitely look into getting an external USB hard drive to store your files on. You really should leave about 10% of your main HD free to give OSX enough room to store swap files, etc.

Hope that helps

-ST-
 
you could also use a bootable linux cd like ubuntu to boot the system to delete / move things.

hold command c at power one to boot cd
 
Ok so here's how it's been going:

I mounted it on a macbook with target disk mode and although it took about 10 minutes to show up it eventually did and I was able to look through the files.

I got carbon copy cloner and tried cloning the disk, but it failed at about 80%. Then I got diskwarrior from a friend and started running it last night. It was stuck on step 6 for a while but I looked it up and people said it could take hours to finish so I let it run overnight.

Mistake: I had some guys over last night and although I told everyone to make sure not to touch the Macs, one of my dumbass friends unplugged the macbook to charge his cell phone when he could have plugged it in any of the other 30 open outlets in my room...

Now it can't be discovered in target disk mode and I can't even boot diskwarrior off the disk using c at boot.

Now I get the kernel panic screen which says to restart the computer, same as this.



So my mac was probably almost fixed, then my dumbass friend messed it up, is it messed up for good now or what? Is there anything I can do?

Thanks everyone for all the help so far, I really appreciate it :cool:
 
try to run disk warrior again. However dude you are better off copying as many of the files as you can save and just replacing the HDD.

Where I work we sometimes gut computers and sell the used hard drives, and I've seen hard drives pass a full battery of diagnostic tests and then get returned because they cant install any OS.

Chances are your partition just got hosed for whatever reason, it may not even be the hard drives fault, but with hard drives as cheap as they are today, why risk your data?
 
UPDATE: Finally made an appointment with the genius bar and headed up to the apple store. I told him the symptoms, he plugged it in, ran a test or two, and said the logic board was most likely fried. He said it was like $500 to get a new board installed or something and that I'd be better off just buying a new computer. So within the next few days I guess I'm taking it apart and trying to clone the hard drive or something... Thanks for all the help guys, I really appreciate it.

P.S. If I do take it apart and get my data and all that, anybody want to buy a broken mac mini? :p
 
Wow, sorry to hear about the bad news. The good news is though that the Mac Minis use standard laptop drives so any 2.5" drive enclosure will work to get your data off your drive and would make a nice drive to keep around for Time Machine on your new Mac.
 
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