My Mac Mini OS X 10.6.8 cd/dvd drive (optical) has quit working

Is this optical drive repairable in a Mac Mini pre- 2005/2006?

replaceable yes
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/mac-mini/superdrive/
repairable only if the lens needs cleaning

Similar Messages

Upgrading mac mini from tiger to leopard with broken DVD drive (long)

bonjour.
I have a macmini (1.42PPC) with a broken DVD drive running tiger on which i would like to install leopard (from scratch). I have a retail DVD of leopard, and a macbook. Other equipment includes a PSP and an 8Gb memory stick duo, usb cables, a 40Gb ipod with firewire cable. Wireless keyboard and mouse.
I've created a bootable image of my leopard DVD onto the 8Gb memory stick in the PSP using the macbook. I can plug the PSP into the macbook and the memory stick mounts as the leopard install DVD. I run InstallOSX and i'm prompted to reboot. Upon rebooting, my macbook boots from the memory stick in the PSP attached via USB and the language option menu of the install process appears. So far so good. I shutdown the macbook.
I then take my bootable image of my leopard DVD and plug it into the macmini. It automounts, i run InstallOSX and i'm prompted to reboot and the macmini restarts.
Unfortunately, the macmini reboots from it's internal HDD, and not the memory stick attached via USB so the installation fails.
Is there a way i can force the macmini to boot or reboot from the USB drive? I only have a wireless keyboard. Does the macmini in fact support booting from a USB device at all?
I don't know much about the firmware shipped with the macmini, and can not access it during startup to take a look as i have a wireless keyboard. Can i access the firmware from the booted macmini to change the boot device, like i can with a Sun Solaris box (eeprom)
Could there be another solution that wouldn't involve playing with the firmware?
I don't have the option of buying additional equipement.
Any thoughts on this problem would be welcome.
best wishes
jack
ps. I added (long) to topic subject, not to phish, but to save others' time, as it's quite a long and boring post

thanks for your advice, however this is all but impossible as i have a wireless keyboard which doesn't permit me boot into anything but the OS, as the keyboard and bluetooth drivers don't load early enough in the boot process.
however, i did find a firewire cable, so this is what i did:
booted the macmini in target mode and added a 10Gb partition to it from the macbook, onto which i restored the leopard DVD image
booted the mac mini normally, and it mounted my new partition. I just ran the install from there et voila

I recently bought a new macbook pro and set it up using the migration assistant and my mac mini. I can't get the text message forwarding feature to work with both computers.

I recently bought a new macbook pro and set it up using the migration assistant from my mac mini. I can't get the text message forwarding feature to work with both computers. It keeps saying that I only have 2 devices setup, my iPad and my macbook pro. When I mess with the setting on my mac mini, it goes from saying that that is one of the devices to my macbook pro being the 2nd device. I think that something happened as a result of my using the migration assistant and now it thinks that my macbook pro and my mac mini are one and the same computer. Any ideas?

Thanks, Sig.
The old computer is a 2.6 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
The new one is a 2.3 GHz intel core i7
In going over this, thanks to "tallking it out" with you, I did discover the Text Edit problem. Because I've still been unable to get the new computer text size (fonts or whatever) to match the old computer, I did not notice that the curser is now different--the line midway down the curser has to be placed on the line I am working upon, otherwise the edits go elsewhere on the page. Now, with a bit of difficulty, I am able to get Text Edit to work correctly.
If you have any ideas as to why my menu bar and Text Edit type are still so slow, I'd love to have them.
(I went through the process you suggested earlier, re my Trackpad preferences, and found no improvement.)

Can i connect my ipad to a mac mini, and also use this ipad as a display? has somebdy ever try this?

can i connect my ipad to a mac mini, and also use this ipad as a display? has somebdy ever try this?

Investigate the Air Display App to see if it will do the job for you.

I have Mac mini and I'm trying to listen to music through YouTube it works. But my problem is that instead of the music playing through the tv speakers it plays through the Mac box. ):

I have Mac mini and I'm trying to listen to music through YouTube it works. But my problem is that instead of the music playing through the tv speakers it plays through the Mac box. ):

Are you using HDMI or an Apple Airplay Module to go to the TV Speakers?
If you are using an HDMI it's straight through output. The internal speakers are disabled.
If you are using an Airplay Module:
- Go on iTunes
- Locate the Airplay icon that has a TV with an up arrow icon much like your iPhone has for Bluetooth
- Click on that and Airplay to ModuleName

Hello, I've just purchase a mac mini 10.9 it doest have a cd drive and so I can't install my Photoshop Elements 4.0. How can I update/upgrade Adobe and in stall in my computer?

Hello, I've just purchase a mac mini 10.9 it doest have a cd drive and so I can't install my Photoshop Elements 4.0. How can I update/upgrade Adobe and in stall in my computer?

that's no longer available for download. in addition, it's unlikely it would work on your mavericks os.
you could purchase pse 12 upgrade, Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 - Buying guide

I migrated photoshop CS4 onto my new mac laptop. Error message on startup: Licensing for this product has stopped working. Error: 150:30

I migrated photoshop CS4 onto my new mac laptop. Error message on startup: Licensing for this product has stopped working. Error: 150:30 What do I do?

Uninstall and run the Cleaner Tool
Uninstall Creative Suite 4 and point products (Mac OS X)
Use the CC Cleaner Tool to solve installation problems | CC, CS3-CS6

Need to boot broken Mac-Mini using retail Snow Leopard 10.6 DVD

Hi,
In Summary:
==========
I have Mac Mini (late 2009) which does not boot anymore and I need to install Snow Leopard using retail DVD (version 10.6). The OS/installer from the DVD does not seem to boot either. I always very much appreciate the efforts of true geeks. So please, any casual beginner, please do not demoralize with something like "cannot be done" etc.
The complete story:
==================
The start of the problem:
1. All of a sudden, one fine day, on start up, my Mac Mini strated to shut itself down without no apparent reason to me. When trying to boot, it would show a progress bar for about 5 minutes - I am assuming that was disk-consistency check being performed. My best guess is that right after the use of Carbon-Copy Cloner (but I am not 100% sure) it all strated to happen.
2. Performed Mac's Disk-Util check and [Verify Volume] used to display "invalid directory item count, should be 31 instead of 29". Surface scan said disk hardware is 100% fine. Volume Repair never worked, since OS X was installed on the primary disk. I lost the DVDs that came with this Mac Mini, so the option to boot from that DVD and launch Disk Util etc. was not possible.
TechTool Pro - No Help:
3. Started googling and had to choose between [TechTool Pro] and [Disk Warrior], opted for TechTool Pro. Tried its bootable DVD only to learn that TechTool Pro cannot fix it. Again, it's surface scan suggested disk hardware is 100% fine. Sent the details to TechTool Pro support team, they couldn't help either after a couple of e-mails+data exchange. (How do I claim my lost money with TechTool Pro - suggestions appreciated as well).
Googling / Mac Forums:
4. Started looking into forums, learnt that someone had successfully repaired this problem using Ubuntu 11.04 install DVD (i.e., without installing the Ubuntu, but just using its 'try from DVD' feature). I had that handy, but forgot to disable HFS+ journaling before attempting to fix the problem. Anyway, attempting volume repair that way couldn't fix the problem as well. However this step took away my ability to boot from Mac.
5. However using Ubuntu's bootable disk, I could access Mac-HDDs contents - and was able to successfully back-up *all* my important data.
6. Googled and learnt that just attempting to boot using Ubuntu DVD can take away ability to boot using Mac bootable media - possibly due to EFI internals. Suspecting EFI is now corrupt, I tried other 'hacks' like:
6.1 eEFIt Boot Disk - which does not work at all,
6.2 Empire EFI w/ Chameleon - not sure how to proceed with options presented - trying either does not work,
6.3 Super GRUB2 - boots fine, but attempting to boot from Mac-HDD fails after a couple of seconds,
6.4 Boot-132 - boots fine, prompt asks for input, but then I cannot eject/replace the DVD due to Mac-Mini (lack of) design,
6.5 Ubuntu 11.04 / 11.10 - still boots fine - just that I cannot go into Mac-OS-X from here,
6.6 TechTool Pro bootable DVD - which used to boot fine earlier stopped to boot.
As you can see, none worked successfully. So I didn't yet try other popular rescue media - as I suspect that is not the direction I need to go into.
>> Looks like most of my problems are due to the fact that I have Mac-Mini which does not allow eject/replace of DVD from command prompt / out side of Mac-OS-X.
7. Tried emptying EFI partition, playing with EFI/Mac-OS partitions boot flags, Zapping the PRAM, nothing still allows me to boot either from Mac-HDD or any Mac-Bootable-DVD.
Current State:
8. Now while boot time, Mac displays a gray screen for a few seconds, and then a blinking prompt on black background. That's it!
Snow Leopard 10.6 Retail Install DVD:
9. Went to Mac store and bought this DVD only to witness that I can't boot from it as well. (This is a huge shocker, how is Apple able to sell these DVDs if these don't work on genuine MacMini itself. After all we are able to boot from and install Windows/Linux on a variety of Machines).
I am hoping for a very small step/fix that I am missing, since I can still see and access all Mac-HDD contents after booting from Ubuntu bootable DVD. However I am prepared for a good amount of exercise as well - assuming someone posts a valid/verified fix.
Things available right now:
==========================
A. Genuine Mac-Mini (Late 2009) who lost it's ability to boot either from its HDD or Mac-bootable DVDs (TechTools Pro, Mac OS X retail DVD)
B. Mac OS X 10.6 Retail DVD
C. NOT AVAILABLE - DVD that came with this Mac-Mini
D. Variety of rescue DVDs, listed in section 6 above
E. Another machine/PC with Ubuntu 11.04 - giving me ability to access internet
Thanks for reading.
Zita

I had a similar discussion recently with another user.
Your Mac mini (late 2009) originally came with Mac OS X 10.6.2 build 10A432 or build 10C2234 see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1159 it would have come with an original install disc specific to your model of Mac which you could use to run Disk Utility from or to do a complete reinstall.
The retail boxed copy of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) was originally intended for older Macs which had previously come with Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.4. It would have on it a version of Mac OS X 10.6 or 10.6.1 which would be able to boot these older Macs, but had no need to boot newer Macs which were released after the launch of Mac OS X 10.6 since all those newer Macs already shipped with their own discs.
So it is normal that the retail boxed Snow Leopard installer does not work on your model Mac mini. You should be using the one that shipped with your Mac mini instead. I am guessing you have lost it.
Assuming you have lost the Mac mini original disc, I can suggest the following options to try and workaround this.
If you have another Mac, an older Mac, one that will be bootable using the retail Snow Leopard install disc you have, you could do either of the following.
Connect an empty external GUID partitioned hard disk to this other Mac
Boot from the retail Snow Leopard installer
Install on to the external disk
Once the install is complete, update it using the combo update not the one via Software Update to Mac OS X 10.6.8. This will add all the newer drivers needed to allow it to work on your newer Mac mini. You can download this combo update from here http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399
You can now disconnect the external drive and connect it to your Mac mini and boot from it by holding down the Option key when you turn the Mac mini on
or a similar process if you want to wipe the Mac mini and reinstall directly on to it
Boot the Mac mini in FireWire Target Disk Mode (see http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661 )
Connect the Mac mini as an external hard disk to the other older Mac
Boot from the retail Snow Leopard installer
Install on to the external disk
Once the install is complete, update it using the combo update not the one via Software Update to Mac OS X 10.6.8. This will add all the newer drivers needed to allow it to work on your newer Mac mini. You can download this combo update from here http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399
You can now disconnect the Mac mini and boot from it as normal
Note: While the Mac mini is connected in FireWire Target Disk mode to the second Mac, you could backup (if you don't already have a backup) any files you need to retrieve.
If you don't have a suitable second Mac you may have to either borrow someone else's, or get the help of an Apple Store if one is in your area.

Want to run a Mac Mini into a 50" Samsung Plasma screen TV...will it work?

The TV is a Samsung PN50B850 Plasma screen with a VGA input: http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/samsung-pn50b850/4505-6482_7-33490381.htm l
Hee are the tech specs: http://ecoustics-cnet.com.com/flat-panel-tvs/samsung-pn50b850/4507-6482_7-334903 81.html?tag=mncol;psum
From what I can tell it should just plug right into the VGA input on the TV...but my question is am I going to have any issues with resolution or anything like that?
Also, from the pictures it looks like the DVI to VGA adapter that apple offers is only like 3 inches long? Do they make them longer than this? I had planned on mounting the TV on the wall above my fireplace on an arm that tilts and swings out about 2-3 ft and just sitting the Mac Mini on the mantle...anyways I didn't want to go away on vacation, have my mom come over, adjust the TV, and send my Mac Mini to its untimely death:(

mapexvenus
Could you please tell me the exact settings you have on your TV and your mac.
Under what menu are you selecting PC DVI?
What resolution and other settings do you have your mac set to?
Currently I have mine setup like so:
Mac Mini with mini dvi to dvi adaptor then a cable dvd to hdmi.
I then have that hdmi plug into port 2 of my tv that says (HDMI/DVI on it.
On the mac I have resolution set to 1920 x 1080 and i have overscan ticked.
The picture is OK but up close i would not say it is perfectly crisp (especially text) but from a about 6 feet away it seems fine.
Is the text on your screen pin sharp?
Thanks in advance

Mac Mini slow when accessing hd - NVidia MCP79 SATA Driver Problem?

I bought a Mac Mini (Early 2009) a while ago. Unfortunately i have a problem concerning speed and responseability which i couldnt solve even with a lot of googleing.
I noticed that problem first time when i tried to play a video file from hd. The video does not play as smooth as it should. It stutters from time to time. It is like a short interruption. The picture freezes for half a second and replays the lost frames very fast after that. These freezes do not occure periodically. It seems to appear randomly. The wierd thing is that the cpu usage is very low and there is enough free ram and disk space.
So i think its not a ressource problem. I noticed that these freezes do not only affect video playback. The whole system is kind of unresponsive. And thats the the case if there is some sort of hd or dvd access. When i try to copy a huge file these freezes are increasing rapidly. The more hd access the more the system is unresponsive and cannot be used anymore.
All these effects reminded me of a faulty dma/udma setting on windows machines. So i tried to check the transfer mode for my macs hd controler. But i didnt find any place where to check that. And i dont really think it is running in pio mode because that would result in a high cpu usage.
I played around a little bit to understand whats going on. So this is what i found out:
When i play a video from the hd its stuttering. It increases if i copy a file from or to the hd. Copying a file from the dvd-rom increases the effect as well. It is not influenced by a copy from AND to an external usb hd. And the whole effects do not appear under Windows Vista no matter how much i acces the hd.
So i come to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with the SATA controler driver which is a NVidia MCP79. Unfortunately i have no idea what i can do to solve this problem. And i didnt find any advice or something in the internet.
So i would appreciate any suggestions.

Ok, I think I was jumping to conclusion. Disabling journaling didnt remove the problem. It just seemed so because my problem is much less distinct with Leopard. Bad luck I guess.
kmac1036, to answer your questions. For sure I dont have warranty anymore. Maybee I should have posted that I upgraded my Mac to 3 GB RAM. Furthermore I replaced the original Hitachi HD with a Western Digital 500 GB model.
Somehow that may be connected to my problem. I've read that many people have problems with the WD HD and those beachballing issues with SN. (I do so too)
But my performance problem when accessing the HD did also exist with the Hitachi. In fact the Mini was extremly slow with the original 1 GB RAM. I think putting some additional memory into the machine helped because it reduced hd accesses.
Ok, I am not an expert. But if I had to guess I would say the following seems to happen. There may be an operation in the hd driver that takes longer than it should. Because of that it maintains cpu cycles and prevents the kernel to continue scheduling. That would explain why the freezes are not connected to a high cpu usage and why the systems seems to catch up things after the freeze very fast.

Mac Mini (PPC) won't boot off install DVD

I'm having a major issue with my 1.24GHZ G4 Mac Mini. What I want to do is reformat the HD and reinstall OSX. But for some bizarre reason the machine refuses to boot off any OSX install DVD I throw at. I've tried Jaguar and Panther as well. If I hold down the C key during reboot and wait for the Apple logo to come up, I get that but it goes no farther. I can hear the drive being accessed (and I know it's not fault because it works fine under OSX) and yet I end up getting stuck at that logo screen. I can reboot the system normally into OSX Tiger.
I also strangely cannot partition the hard drive from within Disk Utility.
Can anyone give advice?

Possible options/questions...
a) Have you tried using the original Install DVD that came with it?
b) Have you tried booting into Single user mode and checked the drive? (Hold down Apple-S until it boots into text mode and when you finally get the prompt type 'fsck -fy' without the quotes).
c) Also, you may wish to try resetting the PRAM immediately before booting from CD. Let it reset THREE times (hold down Apple-Option-P-R or WinKey-Alt-P-R until it has chimed 4 times) and then hold down the C key to boot from your Install DVD.

Mac Mini Won't Boot or Internet Restore - Hard Drive Boots on Macbook

Late 2012 Mac Mini. I cloned my 10.10.2 installation of Yosemite over from my Macbook pro 6,2 to a 1TB Samsung 840 SSD. It booted with no issues besides the keychain being lost and all passwords having to be re-entered.
After a week of going perfectly, it stops recognizing the USB keyboard after I unplugged it and plugged it back in. So I rebooted and get the dreaded stop sign after the boot failed. Oops. I enabled trim before I cloned, but forgot to check if it was working in the cloned drive (seems it was in the end). Since there was no recovery partition, I booted into Internet Recovery, but that hung using both WPA and WPA2 router logins. It obviously was syncing with router, but I got error -2002f in every configuration I tried. It also didn't seem to recognize an ethernet connection. Weird stuff.
I remembered I had an issue with a previous Mac Mini of the same model and the permissions after a clone. I repaired permissions and that was that. This is different because it wouldn't boot into Safe Mode. Resetting the PRAM did bring back an audible chime at least.
I pulled the SSD out of the Mac Mini and alt booted in from my Macbook 6,2. No issues (except the keychain thing again( and it loaded quickly. Nothing seemed to be wrong.
Then I put it back in the Mac Mini and tested it with known working RAM. Still the same thing. So now I am going to sleep on it and try to figure it out. It is unlikely to be a hardware failure as the Mac Mini was made in May 2014 and I bought factory refurbished. It seems to be an issue relating to the SSD as it boots other drives.
Any ideas?

Fix The Bugs Please wrote:
It is unlikely to be a hardware failure as the Mac Mini was made in May 2014 and I bought factory refurbished. It seems to be an issue relating to the SSD as it boots other drives.
Any ideas?
Is this SSD an additional drive added to your Mac Mini or did you replace the HDD with it? If it's an additional drive and since it's a Samsung, depending where you purchased your drive doubler kit (iFixit or OWC) you can try swapping the drives in the bays. I know for a fact that Samsung SSDs do not work right with the iFixit drive doubler kit's SATA cable. But it does work correctly with the Apple supplied SATA cable. If it's the OWC SATA cable, I know for a fact those are much more reliable with Samsung, OWC, Intel, Crucial SSDs. Another thing, I would NOT enable TRIM (my opinion) using a 3rd party trim enabler if you're running Yosemite. There are issues with trim enablers and Yosemite. Just let the built-in Garbage Collection take care of things.
If it's not an additional drive that was added, does your Mac Mini boot and work fine with the stock drive that it came with? Even though it's a 2012 model, if you purchased it refurbished from Apple in May 2014, you're still under warranty (same 1yr as new Macs) and if it's having same or similar issues working with the stock drive, you can take it to a local Apple Store for warranty repair. You would need to have only the stock drive installed (no SSD) before you setup an appointment.

Can the new Mac Mini boot Snow Leopard from an external hard drive?

I currently boot my 2009 Mac Mini from a FW800 external drive with 10.6.8. If I just plug my external drive into a new 2011 Mac Mini, will it boot into Snow Leopard if I set it as the startup disk or will I get a kernel panic?

I bought a 2011 Mac Mini, which came with Lion installed. I thought maybe I could repartition it and have a Snow Leopard partition. So I repartitioned it (500gb split into two 250gb partitions). I named the new partition "SnowLeopard" just to make it easy for me to tell the difference.
I attached the external DVD and put in a Snow Leopard installer disc, holding down the C key so it would boot and install from that, but it just spun for awhile. Doesn't appear to work.
Then I read somewhere else that someone had managed to clone a copy of Snow Leopard onto an external drive and boot from that. In their situation they were talking about a MacBook, but the principle seemed sane.
So I rebooted, holding down the T key to put the Mac Mini into Target hard disk mode, and attached it via Firewire to another MacMini (circa 2008 or so, not sure of year, but it was upgraded last year to Snow Leopard and has been upgraded along and along). Then I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy Snow Leopard (that is, the entire hard disk-- System and all applications and data) to my newer Mac Mini's "snow leopard" partition.
For yucks, when it was done cloning, I restarted the older Mac Mini, and had it boot from the newer Mac Mini's snow leopard partition--- it worked! To make it easy to tell the difference, I changed the desktop background to something completely different. I think I tried booting from Lion but I can't remember if that worked.
Then I rebooted the newer Mac Mini, which booted up in Lion, of course. Going into System Settings, I changed the startup disk to the "snow leopard" partition, and rebooted, and it booted up in Snow Leopard.
I have yet to test the applications on the Snow Leopard partition. Another problem has arisen.
Because with both of the Mac MInis being active on the network, they both had the same computer and user name. So I renamed the newer Mac Mini to something completely different, and changed the password.
Unfortunately, now I cannot change any other setting in the System Settings that requires a password. While the newer Snow Leopard lets me log in with the new user and new password, whenever I try to click the "lock" icon to change something, I'm prompted for a username and password. Apparently this is some different username and password than either the new or old username/password.
I've tried various combinations of both: new user/old password, old user/new password, old user/old password, etc.
So if you do what I've done, be careful about changing the username and password on your cloned computer. I think it may be wiser to create a new user and then delete the old cloned users. I may just have to re-clone the old Mac Mini to the new one again.
If anyone has any ideas about this password conundrum, please pass along!

I want to create for the first time ever an iPhoto library on my Mac Mini from all of my seperate external hard drives over the years. Instead of filling my Mac Mini hard drive space with all of the pics can I import it to a seperate Apple hard drive.

I want to creat for the first time on my Mac Mini an iPhoto library. I have many seperate hard drives with pics I want to import but are concerned I will fill the hard drive with pics alone. Can I install the pics on one larg (1TB) external apple hard drive and use iPhoto functions still with the pics being installed on a seperate drive from the iPhoto OS?

This is our resident iPhoto guru, Terence Devlin's, advice:
You can move your iPhoto Library to an external disk:
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library Folder as an entity from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Once that is done you can import directly into the iPhoto library on the external HD.

I am very new to Mac Mini and need help transferring files to thumb drive

I want to transfer the Mac Mini user guide (manual) to my thumb drive but do not find how to do it. Help, please!

The thumb drive is on the desktop. This is the most embarrassing question I have had to ask in public in a long time, but, how do you drag something. When I try by holding down my mouse on the file name I want to move it doesn't drag it just gives me several other options. I left Microsoft for this and I know nothing about Apple computers except for my iPad.

My Mac Mini OS X 10.6.8 cd/dvd drive (optical) has quit working

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