Mac Mini Freezing (graphics problem, I think?)

Hello everyone,
I'm a new Mac Mini owner and my experience so far has been great, but my machine is freezing (jittery blue artifacts/boxes/glitchy lines) and becoming unresponsive when I do the following:
Rotating in Manga Studio 5 OR Photoshop CS6
Zooming/panning in Google Maps in Chrome
My Mac Mini is:
2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz) with 3MB L3 cache
8 GB (two 2GB) of 1600MHz DDR3 memory
500 GB (5400-rpm) hard drive
Intel HD Graphics 4000
I have OSX Mavericks installed and both Manga Studio, Photoshop and Chrome are all up-tp-date. I've searched previous posts and couldn't find anything that seemed relevant, so my apologies if this has been asked before and I just missed it. Seems like a graphics issue, I think. There are no drivers to update, right?
Thanks for the help!

I'm not sure it is your graphics card since works fine on my 2012 Mini but I have 16GB RAM which then provides more for the graphics 4000 to use and also I7 processor. The graphics 4000 is better than many believe. I use it for video editing and no issues. I also have an SSD but so not sure that is the reason.

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I'll try to make this short, but it is a looonngg problem.
About one month ago my Mac Mini began having problems when I boot up. The computer would freeze on the opening page where I put in my password. My wireless keyboard and trackpad would not work. This would be interminent at first but progressively got worse.
I spent hours on phone tech support. Finally realizing that would not help I drove the 100 mile round trip to the local Apple store for a Genius bar appointment.
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More time now on tech support. One more trip to the Apple store.
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I manually power it down and reboot. Same thing.
I've set up ANOTHER appointment at the Genius bar tomorrow.
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I purchased this in February so it is in warranty.
Thanks

rwgleaves wrote:
I took it to the Apple store Genius bar today - my 5th trip - and they did just what I'd hoped. They replaced the Mac Mini with a brand new machine.
This is why I buy Mac/Apple!
Excellent new, sorry you had so much trouble on the way. And yes, Apple Stores are awesome!

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Our Mac Mini freezes up constantly. Some days it happens after a few minutes of running and other times after a few hors. After the computer freezes, the screen fragments. We seem to have enough memory and so not certain what the problem could be.
AKS

Hi AKS,
Maybe you have got a temperature problem affected Mac Mini as our Mac Mini Server. You can read about it here:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/13242219#13242219
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I'm going to have to return my Mac Mini unless this problem is fixed asap.
Mac Min, OSX Yosemite (10.10).

Mac Mini freezes at startup for both mac and windows. Any Ideas?

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Thanks for getting back so quickly. But, it worked. I did what you said and now it works doing a normal boot to in both Windows and Mac. I wonder what went wrong, as both operating systems didn't boot (I tried numerous times).
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I keep loosing blue tooth connection resulting in mac mini freezing.

I keep loosing blue tooth connection resulting in mac mini freezing. I am using an apple wireless keyboard and mouse. This did not happen until i upgraded to mountain lion. your thoughts
I leave the system on with Itunes loaded so I can use it for my media center with my Apple TV's
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[email protected]

Did you ever find a resolutution to your issue? I have a similar issue after installing Mavericks where the Arris modem goes to sleep when my iMac does, even though other devices on the network are actively requesting data. For the time being, as long as the iMac doesn't sleep the network is fine.

Mac mini 6630m graphic card have problem during running windows 8.1 problem with bootcamp

Hi All,
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Thank you for your reply!!
I have try to install the driver for the bootcamp ,but it dosn't work too.
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Thank you again!!
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Mac Pro freezes, graphical glitches

Hi all,
I have an early 2008 Mac Pro, quad 2.8 GHz, 8 GB RAM (2x 1 GB (original Apple), 2x 1 GB (Nanya), 2x 2GB (Elixir)), GeForce 8800GT, 2 HDDs, 1 optical drive. It connects to a local Mac Mini Server (although I doubt that this is related in any way).
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As you can see, it's all very erratical.
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Hi Luka, I own the same machine you do, with a slight variant of only 4 GB RAM and 3 GHz processors, yesterday I beagan experiencing similar symptoms.
Freezes accompanied by graphic glitches, I scratched my head for a while and for the evening resolved the problem by zapping the PRAM. It seemed to work until today after a long and intensive use the problem appeared again. I've zapped the PRAM once more and am planning to give the machine thourough cleanup as soon as I get my hands on a fresh can of dry air. But I suspect my graphics card... It died and got changed once before... Fortunately I had purchased an Apple Care plan which should still be valid, and will not hesitate to change the card if the problem is confirmed.
I suggest you try zapping the PRAM as well and from there see how it goes. Meanwhile I tested my machine with techtools pro and found no hardware problem. A friend is coming over with Drive Genius to confirm the findings, I'll keep you posted on my progress.
Good luck to you ... and I...
Message was edited by: papoosefr

Mac Mini Freezing Issues

So, I recently bought a refurbished Mac Mini, late 2009 model. It worked fine for the first few months, but after moving back to school, it started acting oddly. First, it had problems booting. It would freeze up during the boot up, or occasionally right after if finished booting. After messing around with it, it started working fairly reliably again. However, every once in a while, under moderate use, it would freeze up and would have problems restarting. I came to the realization that it was probably overheating, and tried a few tricks to get more air to it. This worked…
For a while. Last week, it died. It would get to the gray screen with the spinning wheel, and then freeze. It couldn't get past this step. In desperation, I took it into the Apple store, as it was still under warranty. After several days, they fixed it, but in the process, had to replace the hard drive. Luckily, I had a back up. Reset the computer, reloaded the back up, and started to use it… only to have it freeze again.
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My current set up is thus:
Late 2009 Model Mac Mini, 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
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Ethernet internet (limited wireless here in the dorms)
Apple keyboard and Logitech mouse
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If anyone has any further insight into this or can verify my hypothesis, that would be great. Thank you for your time.

After looking around online some more, found that there are many complaints with this specific hard drive. The main issue, it seems, is that it has limited ventilation, and therefore has issues staying cool. Unfortunately, due to the length of my firewire cord, the external hard drive typically has to sit fairly close to the Mini, usually resting on top of it. So, if this is right, then it's the poorly designed external HD overheating, which in turn overheats the Mini to the point of failure. I'll look into getting a better external to replace this one, and for the time being I'll only have it connected for brief periods for backup.

Mac Mini 2011 headless problems

Hi have Mac Mini alu 2011 not the latest versione with thunderbolt port. I use it as backup server, with no monitor connected. Many application don't work without a monitor connected, anyone have same issues and a solution?
Thanks in advance.

I had the same issue and didn't want to give up my Thunderbolt port, so I opted to get a Gefen HDMI Detective Plus. What this does is make the CPU think an HDMI display is attached so that your graphics CPU 'unlocks' and full speed is back. The Gefen box can either 'learn' the code of any HDMI display in your office/home, or you can preset it as a stock 1080p display. TOTALLY solved my problem... even though it did cost $85.
Apple needs to fix this as so many people use the MINI headless.
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/ext-hdmi-edidp.jsp?prod_id=8005

Mac Mini 2011 - Monitor Problems - Help

My picture is not sharp... just blury. Icons, pictures, text, mostly everything is bad except high quality video files.
I just purchased a Mac Mini 2011 second option and a Samsung TA531 monitor that arrived today. Hooked it up and to my surprise, it is blury and bad quality no matter what kind of resolution i use. I also try to text smoothening through terminal.. nothing helps.
My setup:
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Samsung SyncMaster T27A531
Cable: HDMI
After reading about this issue, some people recommends to use a DVI or VGA cable and claims that HDMI is not suitable for computer monitors, especially Samsung.
Please, feel really sad and lost among a lot of new computer equipment that doesn't work properly

I had the same issue and didn't want to give up my Thunderbolt port, so I opted to get a Gefen HDMI Detective Plus. What this does is make the CPU think an HDMI display is attached so that your graphics CPU 'unlocks' and full speed is back. The Gefen box can either 'learn' the code of any HDMI display in your office/home, or you can preset it as a stock 1080p display. TOTALLY solved my problem... even though it did cost $85.
Apple needs to fix this as so many people use the MINI headless.
http://www.gefen.com/kvm/ext-hdmi-edidp.jsp?prod_id=8005

Mac Mini Server Graphics?

Hi,
I'm torn between getting a secondhand Mac Pro and a Mac Mini i7 server. I recently tried the Current Mac Pro against the basic i5 Mac Mini in the Apple Store and did not like the juddering graphics of the latter when opening Launchpad. Is it possible that the problem was low ram and slow hard drive or is it just that the HD3000 graphics are not able to keep up?
I mainly use my system for music production but I think I would find the slow graphics irritating. If I did buy a Mac Mini I would replace the system drive with an SSD I already own and increase the ram to 16gb.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

BDAqua wrote:
Hopefully, but I wouldn't consider the slower Server Version which is meant for a whole different purpose, plus, I've never been happy with any Intel Shared Graphics solution.
LOL, I did. And I had to consider only base configurations, not BTO -- call it, being a sucker for killer discounts. The Mini Server has a 4 core i7 and two HD stock, so I went for that. Extra cores help with rendering and batch converting RAW image files.
Even if you BTO the Mini with the AMD Radeon, you can up the CPU from a i5 to i7 dual core, not quad core. Quad core goodness is found only in the server with the Intel GPU. Such are the compromises that one faces.
As for GPU, I'd already been using the Intel in MBP i7 13", so I knew what to expect. I'm not seeing anything devasting with the standard graphics apps (CS, Quark) and FCS; I don't game. I upgraded to 8GB RAM from the get go -- well, with exception of the shipping time. With 8GB RAM, the Intel gets 512MB for VRAM, less when there's less RAM. Works for me, but people have different needs and expectations. Launchpad doesn't "judder" for me, but then again, I only know it with the Intel GPU.

10.6.8 Wifi Mac Mini Core Solo Problems

Hi All,
I have had my beloved Mac Mini core solo (1.5ghz) since 2007 and have had regular upgrades to keep it alive (upgraded hard drive, ram etc.).
A couple of days ago I upgraded the airport card - it previously was only 802.11 a/b/g, but I now have the atheros 9280 802.11 a/b/g/n successfully installed into the machine.
The main reason for doing this is that my previous airport card just never seemed to work at all; I have an iphone and ipad and they both successfully connect to my Orange livebox router with no problems whatsoever, yet my Mac Mini did not connect at all having tried everything I can. Therefore my final solution was to arrange an update of the airport card to the new atheros one suggested by my local Apple dealer.
I brought the Mac home, and tried to attahc to my wifi router to immediate success. It had full signal strength and was working flawlessly. I then turned the machine off, went out for a while and then came home to find it was not working again and kept searching for the wifi router and asking for constant passwords. After a long time, it seemed to work again but after I turned the machine off it lost the settings (depsite me asking network settings to save via the locked button) and I am constantly repeating this process.
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Software Versions:
Menu Extra: 6.2.2 (622.2)
configd plugin: 6.2.5 (625.6)
System profiler: 6.0.1 (601.1)
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Aiport Utility: 5.5.3 (553.20)
IO80211 Family: 4.0 (400.40)
Card Type: Airport Extreme (0x168C, 0x8F)
Firmware version: Atheros 9280: 2.1.14.6
Locale: FCC
Country Code: DE
Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Supported Channels: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,36,40,44,48,52,56,60,64,100,104,108,112,116,120,1 24,128,132,136,140
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Just to also add that its Snow Leopard 10.6.8, Intel Mac Mini core 1.5ghz solo, and my Orange Wifi router is quite old (around 2006) so supports a/b/g - I was thinking that this may be the fault but why would all my other apple systems have no problems with this connection?
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fdsbh

Really? I thought Sno was supposed to be more efficient?
I'd say that SL is more efficient on a machine it was made to run on. Apple didn't exclude the single core Intel processor, probably because they didn't have to change their code like they would have for a PPC processor but part of the efficiency is it's ability to split services to the separate cores in the CPU. You only have one, so that part of the improvement is of no use. All of the processes the OS handles and splits to multiple CPU cores are worthless and your programs will just have to wait until the CPU has time for you.
Meanwhile, the programs you are running are more powerful and provide higher quality and really need the extra core. The speed of the ram, the buss, and the hard drive are not as fast as your MacBook either. All of this data has to be moved around quite a bit from the drive to ram and then back to the drive.
Christmas is coming
WinXP will run on a 600Mhz PII processor with 128MB's of PC100 ram, but you wouldn't want to. It's not a lot of fun to work with or work on.
Unless there is some whiz bang program or technology that you need from SL, I'd take the machine back to Leopard or even Tiger, which it probably ran pretty well.

Mac Mini DVI Monitor Problems

Hi all,
I'm running OSX10.8.5 on a Mac Mini 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 with 4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 memory and Intel HD 4000 512MB graphics.
I've just upgraded my monitor from a VGA 17" to an AOC E2462VWH 24" monitor, plugged into my computer via DVI with a Thunderbolt adaptor.
In a normal boot-up, the monitor displays video for a split second and then cuts to black. The picture works fine in Safe Boot mode but video is jerky, everything loads slower, I can't play .mov files (Quicktime tells me unknown error -101) and there is an annoying flicker every 10 seconds. The fact the monitor works fine in Safe Boot suggests to me the problem is software. Resolution is set to 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz and OSX is not letting me change that via Settings.
I went searching for drivers only to lean it sounds like OSX deals with monitors in a plug-n-play format. Is this true?
Firstly, can I confirm my mini has the power to drive this monitor?
Besides that, can you please help me figure out how to boot this computer so the monitor displays in normal boot-up mode?
Thanks for your help!

Then it sounds like yo need one of these:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB571Z/A/mini-displayport-to-dual-link-dvi-ada pter

Mac Mini HDMI Output Problem w/ LG L246WP

NOTE: This appears to be unrelated to the "screen flickering" that has been noted previously.
I'm using a fresh new Mac Mini 2012 with an LG L246WP LCD monitor. The monitor has HDMI, VGA and Component video inputs.
When I attach the monitor to the Mini DisplayPort output, using a Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter connected to a DVI to HDMI cable, the display functions properly at all resolutions - including the native 1920 x 1200 resolution that I use it at normally. All resolutions are clearly displayed in the "Displays" System Preferences pane. The display looks perfect, functions properly.
When I attach the monitor to the HDMI port using an HDMI cable, the display does not fucntion properly. The display is shifted about 80-100 pixels to the left and about 20 pixels up, creating black bars on the bottom and right sides. Because of this, a large portion of the display is not visible including the menu bar and most of the left side. Additionally, the settings are reduced to "Best for Display" or "Scaled", with resolution options under "Scaled".
This is not acceptable. I had planned on simply using the Mini DisplayPort output as a workaround, since I already have the DVI adapter from an old setup, but I need to use Thunderbolt to access external hard drives for rapid data transfer. One of my Thunderbolt accessories does not have two ports, so I can't simply add the Mini DisplayPort adapter to a chain. The HDMI port needs to function properly with my monitor.
It's important to note that this monitor has functioned properly with many other comptuers running OS X, Windows and various Linux flavors and it hasn't ever done this before. I've tried several different HDMI cables, ruling that out as a problem. I've tried the HDMI to DVI adapter that ships with the Mac Mini 2012 along with two different DVI to HDMI adapters, ruling that out as a problem. I tried attaching several HDMI devices (game consoles, DVD players, etc) and they all function properly, ruling out an HDMI issue as a problem. The monitor functions properly when attached through the Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter, so it's not a problem with the monitor. I've reset the PRAM already and the installation of OS X 10.8.1 is stock with no modifications or migrated data. I've tried the suggestions on the HDMI FAQ (although there's no "underscan" option available in Displays)
I tried to call AppleCare and after describing the problem I got disconnected with no callback. I started another ticket, described the problem, discussed the previous disconnection, was assured that I'd be called back if disconnected, and haven't heard back in two hours. So I started to dig into the problem in earnest.
This gets pretty technical.
After substantial research, it appears that this issue is related to the EDID that the monitor sends to the computer and, crucially, the way that the driver responds to it. For some reason, the HDMI port is recognizing the monitor as a CEA device instead of a monitor. As a result, it's restricting the monitor's available resolution to the native resolution that the CEA 681 Series Extension describes ("Best for Display") and all other resolutions (including 1920 x 1200) are only available as "scaled". For some reason that I can't discern, all resolutions (even the 1080i and 1080p options) have similar deformities.
I've attempted to fix this by placing an appropriate override file in /System/Library/Displays/Overrides with an edied EDID removing the CEA-enable flag from byte 127 but, even after a reboot, the OS still insists that it's a CEA device and it won't allow me to force it to recognize the monitor as a 1920 x 1200 LCD Monitor.
How did I come to this conclusion and develop the fix? A nearly identical problem description showed up on the following website, with details on how this user fixed the issue:
http://byuu.org/articles/computing/edid
They used a convoluted process that involved dismantling the monitor and flashing the EDID on the monitor itself. It fixed their problem. I'd prefer not to go through that process just because one computer has a problem with it. Frankly, I'd prefer if the new Mac Mini performed properly in the first place.
TL;DR: The Mac Mini 2012 doesn't work right with the LG L246WP through the HDMI output. Everything else works fine with it. This is very uncool. It's most likely to be an issue with the driver for the Intel HD Graphics 4000 GPU that are bundled with OS X 10.8.1. The Mac Mini 2012 won't update to 10.8.2 (yet), so I can't test it.
Anyone have any other ideas? Anyone else using a Mac Mini 2012 (or 2011) with an LG L246WP monitor? Anything simple I've missed?

Problem Resolved. But it was complicated. And a huge pain in the rear.
TL;DR: I flashed the EDID as described here. This is not recommended for the weary. Ideally, Apple should release an update OS X that will include the updated Intel HD Graphics 4000 drivers that utilize the CEA flag properly.
Here's the detailed version. As mentioned above, this isn't recommended for the weary. An improper (or interrupted) EDID flash can have seriously unpredictable effects on a monitor's performance.
Step 1: Get a Windows PC set up with a floppy drive and find a floppy disk. Use this system to format the floppy as a MS-DOS Boot Disk and copy over the "ddcw" program described at the aformentioned link.
This took awhile, but I was able to cobble together a temporary frankensystem with parts I had laying around. In installed XP and formatted the disk with XP's format tool.
Step 2: Grab EDID data from the monitor, modify it to disable CEA mode at bit 127 and make sure bit 128, the checksum, is appropriate.
This also took awhile. Several graphics cards I tried could not read or write EDID data. I ended up swapping AGP cards in my frankenstein box until I found one that worked - a generic GeForce4 4200.
Once the EDID data was written to the floppy, I edited the text file containing the EDID data to change the last two hex octets from "01 33" to "00 34" (00, to disable bit 127, and 34 is 33 + 1, which satisfies the checksum) and formatted the text file to match the sample included in the EDID_Write.zip file. Your mileage may vary - make sure the checks.
Step 3: Write EDID data to the monitor.
The link above mentioned three options: Easy (monitor's EDID is unprotected - write away!), Hard (monitor's EDID is protected - use service mode to attempt a fix), and Very Hard (monitor's EDID is protected, hardware modification is required).
Luckily my LG246WP simply needed to be put into service mode as described at the link above (menu + power) and once started up in service mode, I simply enabled "Aging Mode" (whatever that means) and attempted a DDCW write of the updated data.
Step 4: Profit!
After doing this, I powered off the monitor and powered it back on with the Mac Mini attached. The display functions PERFECTLY with HDMI out, just as it does using the Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter.

Mac Mini Freezing (graphics problem, I think?)

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