My Mac Mini Turns on by itself or is it The Ghost In The Machine?

Lately I have been noticing that my Mac Mini is turning itself on after being off for several hours. At first I thought it might be another member of my household, but when I questioned they all about they all state they did not turn it on. Now unless I have ghost in my house that are big Mac fans I can't figure out why or how it can be turning itself on. As far as I know there have been no power outages in my area that might have caused it to think it needs to be turned on when the power came back in, and besides why would it need to restart after a power outage if it was already off when the power went out and came back on.

Check your Energy Saver settings in System Preferences. Under Schedule there may be a startup time someone set, which is causing it to start up at the odd time of the day.

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Why does my mac mini turn off by itself?

My 2009 mac mini turns itself off after a few minutes. This started after a power failure. Might the logic board be fried?

1. Reset the SMC, as per > Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
2. Zap the NVRAM/PRAM, as per > About NVRAM and PRAM
3. Boot into Safe Mode, as per > Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode
Then boot back into normal mode and if it is still turnning itself off...?
Run the Hardware test, as per > Using Apple Hardware Test

Mac mini turns off without any reason

My Mac mini turns off without any reason. I just want to make a backup with time machine and after a while the computer doesn´t work anymore. I just see the start-screen with all the users and I had to sign with my user password. After the mac restarts, I had to start time machine again. I stopped energy-management, because I thought that might be the problem but not. Time machine should work the whole night, but I don´t want to sit the whole time next to the mac to wake him up every several minutes. What can I do?

From the menu bar, select
 ▹ System Preferences... ▹ Security & Privacy
If there's a closed padlock icon in the lower left corner of the preference pane, click it and enter your login password when prompted.
Click the Advanced button and, in the sheet that opens, uncheck the box marked
Log out after … minutes of inactivity

I am trying to play my digital music off a hard drive onto my home stereo. I would like to know if the mac mini can just hook to my processor and play music through the processor(preamp) on my home stereo speakers?

I currently have a nice home stereo component system. I also have a 500 GB external hard drive loaded with music. I am looking for a way to play the music off this Hard Drive onto my home stereo system. I currently have a WD home entertainment box that I can play movies that I download off the Internet on my TV, of course piped through my home stereo for the sound. I would like to know if the mac-mini could be used in this form also. Just have the HD hooked to it, the TV would become my monitor and the mac mini would play the music ... RANDOMLY ... with the use of iTunes. This of course would be hooked up to the home system with an hdmi cable and the HD hooked up through a USB connection.
Just would like to know if this could work?

Yes. Is the short answer.
You can directly connect the speaker out port of the Mac mini to an input on the AV Receiver which then feeds your speakers. This would be an audio only solution. If you use a TOS-Link connection this will be a pure digital connection ensuring the best quality (important for audiophiles).
You can if you wish connect the video from the Mac mini to the AV Receiver, and if you have a Mac mini with HDMI or a Mini Displayport you can run the audio and video via a single cable. (Older models would use two cables, the aforementioned TOS-Link pus a DVI to HDMI cable.)
If you do connect the video output from the Mac to the AV Receiver you can then display this on your TV, and have as one possibility iTunes displayed with perhaps one of the iTunes visualisers playing along with the music. Another possibility would be to use FrontRow on the Mac.
A different approach would be to have the Mac mini stream over a network to a device e.g. the Sonos Zoneplayer which is then connected to the AV Receiver. An AirPort Express is also able to do this.

I there, my question is quite simple, I would like to know if the "apple remote control" can be used with a mac mini and , if so, it can be used to control also the "logic pro" functions (e.g. record, start, stop etc). Thks a lot, Danilo

I there, my question is quite simple, I would like to know if the "apple remote control" can be used with a mac mini and , if so, it can be used to control also the "logic pro" functions (e.g. record, start, stop etc). Thks a lot, Danilo

Good work, thanks for the report.

I have a Mac mini mid 2010. I have ML installed on one of the 500GB disks. I want to install Boot Camp on the 2nd 500GB disk. Mine is XP Professional.

I have a Mac mini mid 2010. I recently installed ML on one of the 500GB disks. I want to install Boot Camp on the 2nd 500GB disk. Mine is XP Professional. My original OS was Snow Leopard Server edition. Please let me have your suggestions and advice. Thank you. I am in India.

Mountain Lion Boot Camp no longer supports Windows XP, it would also only prepare the same physical disk you run the Boot Camp Utility from i.e. the Mountain Lion disk.
See http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4818#3
I suggest you start off with the second drive formatted as a single HFS+ volume with a GUID partition scheme, then install Snow Leopard on it. Then boot with Snow Leopard and run its version of Boot Camp utility, when you tell it to prepare the (second) drive you can tell it to allocate the minimum to Snow Leopard and the maximum to Windows. Then you can install Windows XP.
Note: Boot Camp Utility was not included with Snow Leopard Server.

Hi Guys, I have a problem with Importing Pictures onto my Mac mini with Lion installed by using a Card Reader, What is the problem here so I can get Pictures onto my Computer. ,

Hi Guys,
I have a problem with Importing Pictures onto my Mac mini with Lion installed by using a Card Reader,
What is the problem here so I can get Pictures onto my Computer. ,

Hi Noob Søren
There are a few things that are confusing in your question.
As far as I know, you dont have to install Time Machine on this OS as it is already installed for you. You only need to connect a hard drive to your computer via firewire or usb, click on the Time Machine icon, Open Time Machine Preference in the drop down menu and select a disk: your connected hard drive.
You can of course reformat this connected device, partition it into a few volumes to organise data if you so wish.
I find it strange that your mac's hard drive is divided into two volumes... perhaps this was created through bootcamp?
You can access the configuration of your hd through Applications/Utilities/Disk Utilities.
Clicking on one of the icons on the right hand panel will bring the details of the contents of your hardDrive and volumes. From there you can decide to erase a partition, reformat etc....
If your hd contains more than one volume, and one of them is empty, you could decide to remove it. Back up all your important data before doing so.
Hope this helps
WN

Hi I have a mac mini with my TV as a display. MY display includes the taskbar but no menu bar, how do I see menu bar???

HI
I have a mac mini with my TV as a display. My display includes the taskbar but no menu bar, how do I see menu bar???

Make sure you are using a 1080p capable TV. Some TVs have pixel level video ratio adjustment. Sometimes that can force the menubar to be visible if it is the only display connected to the machine. Sometimes you have to go to your hard drive's Applications -> System Preferences -> Displays and drag the white bar on top of the display's representation to the other display. You can only have one primary display with menubar.
Lastly, for non-1080p capable displays, DisplayConfigX or SwitchResX offer pixel level adjustments through software.

I have mac mini os x mountain lion can i put snow leopard on the partition

I have a mac mini os x mountain lion can i put snow leopard on the partition

on the same partition? no. you'll need to create another partition if you want to dual boot, and install SL there.

Why does my mac mini's mouse show a pinwheel every time I hover over the date area? Also, sometimes the date shows up incorrectly.

Why does my mac mini's mouse show a pinwheel every time I hover over the date area? Also, sometimes the date/time shows up incorrectly. It started happening after I updated to OS X Mountain Lion.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Try the action that you're having trouble with again. Post any messages that appear in the Console window – the text, please, not a screenshot.
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into a message.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Edit it out by search-and-replace in a text editor before posting.

Mac Mini turns on when I turn on the light in my room

It's actually cool. I come back from work or uni, turn on the light and my mac mini awakes from sleep mode.
Is it normal?
It has never happened before last couple updates.
The mac mini itself is connected to power with an extension cable, together with three other devices (2.1 audio system, an external hdd and another extension cable for printer and display).

tristamson wrote:
I guess it has something to do with electric current.
surely you have a UPS installed, right ?
I guess it started after I updated to 10.6.4 (but not so sure...).
hmm, unless you have a mid 2010 mini, try this:
(a) download the [_*Mac OS X v10.6.4 Update (Combo)*_|http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1048]
(b) launch *disk utility* (in applications/utilities), +verify disk+ and +repair permissions+
(c) reboot into _*safe mode*_
(d) run the combo
(e) after running the combo, let the Mac reboot normally and +repair permissions+ again.
any improvement ?
JGG

My Mac mini turns on but doesn't move past the grey screen..... HELP??

Hi,
I have had my mac mini for 3 months and i went to turn it on today and it wont move past the grey screen with the apple logo and the swirling icon underneath. It had started to drop internet signal and also reacting slow and now this has happened. I have only had it three months from new and i dont know what to do. I have done a safe reboot etc and nothing has worked !! HELP!!

Intermittent problems are by far the most difficult to identify and correct. You can run a test one time and it passes with flying colors and the next time it fails. Apple Hardware Test and Disk Utility are definitely the not the most rigerous tests available and are not nearly as thorough as the tests available to the Genius Desk personel.

My mac just turn off by itself

help me please... i have guarantee

1. Reset the SMC, as per > Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
2. Zap the NVRAM/PRAM, as per > About NVRAM and PRAM
3. Boot into Safe Mode, as per > Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode
Then boot back into normal mode and if it is still turnning itself off...?
Run the Hardware test, as per > Using Apple Hardware Test

Leaving Mac mini turned on

Planning to buy a Mac mini to receive faxes and read them while on the go with remote access. This would mean I would not turn it off for long periods of time, like 2 weeks or so. Would this be a problem to it?
Danny

There have been many, many threads here relating to clicking noises (and worse) from mini hard drives - and while some clearly have been related to failing drives, most are simply reports of noises that are commonplace with drives of this size and type, and which have been commonplace on Mac minis since their first release two years ago. Indeed, my original, 2 year old, mini has been running 24/7 all that time, making a range of clicking and clonking sounds from the drive, and it is showing no signs of problems.
While it's not really possible to tell from your description if your drive fits the same pattern of sounds, if it does it is just the drive briefly parking the head between read/write actions - most laptop drives are designed to do this as a precautionary measure. I would not be greatly concerned at the noise, but given the system is new, you might want to take it back to the supplier (or an Apple store if you have one within reasonable distance) and have it checked out.

Mac mini turned on will not com up on monitor

I am unable to get my mac mini to open on screen?

It is not clear what you mean by "turned on".
Does the Power light go and stay on?
Do you hear the startup chime?
Maybe:
Apple computers: Troubleshooting issues with video on internal or external displays - Apple Support

My Mac Mini Turns on by itself or is it The Ghost In The Machine?

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