Older mac mini won't reboot from Install DVD?

I've passed on my 2006 era mac mini to my daughter. We can't seem to get to a factory settings because it won't reboot from the install DVD. It keeps cycling through to the normal reboot.

Could be damaged disks.
BestBuy sells disk repair kits.
But for about the same price as disk repair kit, you could call 1-800-676-2775 and give them the unit serial number and pay shipping/handling fee for replacement.
Assuming it is bad disks.

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Mac Mini won't start after installing OS X 10.6.3

My Mac Mini won't start after installing Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3. When I turn it on, the Apple logo appears and the initialization line starts to fill, but it suddenly stops. It does that again and stops at the same point, but this time it shuts down. What should I do?

If you are coming from 10.5.8, hopefully you backed up your important data first. Your mini will need at minimum, 1 GB of RAM to install Snow Leopard and at least 5 GB of storage remaining on your boot drive.
I treat 10.6.3 as a fresh, full install over a 10.5.8 system. That means I choose Disk Utility from the Installer's menu and repartition the boot drive as a single partition, Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) format, and use the GUID partition scheme from the options button. At this point, while still in Disk Utility, I would verify the drive under First Aid.
Then I turn the installer loose, and reboot into a working 10.6.3 system, ready for the software updates that take the machine to 10.6.8.
So, following the above guidelines, reinstall 10.6.3.

Hi guys I'm really in need of some help. I have an IMac I3 for a while now I've been having a problem of my machine refusing it shut down , it goes to a blue screen with a spinning wheel but doesn't shut down. And now won't boot from install DvD

Please some one help me ...
A) my mac won't shut down with external HD connected (if it's been used)
B) there are disk permissions that can't be fixed SUID stuff ..
C) I have now verified the Mac HD and it tells me it's corrupt in bold red writing and to start up from install DVD
D) it won't boot from DVD so I cannot run the repair , initially the machine was spitting it out on start up , now it appears to be attempting to boot off DVD , well it sounds like it is .... BUT it's hanging with the Mac Logo and a wheel ... For um .... 30min now...
E) weirdly when OSX is booted off the hard drive , it won't recognise the Install DvD or the applications one... It just spits them out....
I had an old PPC 17" and it was a beaut .... Never had a single problem with it ...
I bought this one December 2010 and it's been nothing but issues for a computer in excess of £1000 I'm extremely disappointed ... And weirdly the shutting down issue started when it was a week out of warrantee ... I feel conned and am almost at the point of throwing it at a wall and buying a PC

Ok so I've done what you said and this is what it's come back ....
I don't know that these are the errors , but they're the things which don't look right ...
Throughout the shut down there is a recurring line ;
It says ;
Com.apple.launchd 1 0x100600e70.anonymous.unmount 301 PID still valid
Then there are 2 more which I think are related ;
Com.apple.securityd 29 PID job has I overstayed its welcome , forcing removal.
Then the same with fseventd 48 and diskarbitrationd 13
Oh and on Launchd1 : System : stray anonymous job at shut down : PID 301 PPID13 PGID 13 unmount...
Then the last process says "about to call: reboot (RB_AUTOBOOT).
Continuing...
And stops ...
Hope this means something to you ... Thanks again for your help so far :-)

My Mac Mini Will Not Boot From Install Disc For Re-Installation

I've tried all (at least the ones I've found) workarounds to get my Snow Leopard Install Disc to boot, but it will not. When the computer boots normally (without the DVD), I can insert the DVD and access it from there. However, when I try to use the utilities on the disc, it requires a reboot that ends up telling me to turn off my computer. I have a Late 2010 Mac Mini and I have yet to try booting from a disc, so I don't know if this is a new problem or an old one. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Unplug everything from your computer except a wired keyboard/mouse and the monitor. If your Mini still won't boot from the install DVD try resetting the PRAM and SMC.
Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)
Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
If that doesn't fix the problem remove any RAM (if you upgraded) and replace with the Mini's original RAM. There is also this document you might want to read, Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup.
If that all fails I would take the Mini to the Apple store. It should still be under warranty if you bought it late last year.

Mac Mini Won't Sleep after installing 10.4.6

My Mac Mini wakes itself up after just 1 minute of putting it to sleep mode. I've tried restarting my mini, and tried quitting all apps and disabling airport and bluetooth- but it still won't sleep! Anyone else experiencing this problem, I didn't have this problem with 10.4.5 and I've installed no other software since then...

This is for a Mac that won't sleep.
First, read things in Apple doc.#25801 on sleep settings.
USB devices and hubs often cause Macs to not sleep or wake quickly from sleep (notably HP printers and scanners, HP all in ones, and Cannon scanners). Disconnect all USB except for keyboard and mouse and try. If it sleeps, add one back at a time testing after each one to find the culprit.
If you've set your Mac to recieve faxes, it may not be able to sleep. It might also have a damaged preferences file.
If you use your Mac for faxing, open System Preferences. click Print & Fax, click the Faxing tab, and uncheck the Recieve Faxes On This Computer box.
If that does'nt work or you've never faxed on your Mac, go to Finder/Hard Drive /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration and delete the com.apple.PowerManagement.plist and com..apple.AutoWake.plist files (if your Mac asks, type your admin. password).
If the latter file isn't present in the folder, go to user name(probably your name)/Library/Preferences, delete the com.apple.systemuiserver.plist file, and reboot your Mac.
Hope this helps!
P.S. One member here reported this (Michael Gleason);
"I have had this problem with my IMac G5. It is surprisingly irritating. LaCie's Silverkeeper backup software was the cause. By default it gave itself permission to wake up the computer to check if a backup was needed. Do you have this or a similar program installed which has scheduled activities including wake-up permissions as an option?"
Dave Hamilton provided this link, xlr8yourmac.com, to a member, which addresses failure of deep sleep with some users that updated and added new FireWire and USB cards.
tomhorvat adds this; After few days of messing around I found out that I had desktop background (wallpaper) set to change every 1 minute.
After unchecking "Change picture..." in system preferences (under Desktop/Screen saver), my powerbook went to sleep all by itself.
Cheers!
DALE

Mac Mini won't boot from dvd

I just picked up a used Mac Mini and the previous owner didn't wipe the hard drive. He did include the original install disks in the package, though. I inserted the install disk & it says that OS X Tiger can't be installed on the mini (currently it is running Snow Leopard 10.6.8). I tried to boot from DVD but if I hold down the c key, nothing happens and it boots to the HD like normal. If I hold down the option key, the only boot option shown is the HD. I don't get any request for a password, so this mini doesn't appear to have a firmware password set. The DVD drive appears to be functioning fine since it can read the DVD - I just can't boot from it. If I use the Startup disk utility the only option shown once again is the HD. I even tried upgrading to Mavericks, but get an error message that it can't be installed on this mini (I checked the requirements and this machine meets them - running 10.6.8, at least 2 Gig ram, 1.83 GHz Core 2 duo, 60 Gigs free space on the drive.......
I want to do a clean install but am at a loss on how to do so. Any suggestions?

I inserted the install disk & it says that OS X Tiger can't be installed on the mini (currently it is running Snow Leopard 10.6.8).
You can't install an older version of OS X on top of a newer version. You would have to erase the disk first.
I tried to boot from DVD but if I hold down the c key, nothing happens and it boots to the HD like normal.
Make sure you're using disk# 1 of 2 of the two gray disk set., and that you hold the C key down for enough time, the boot process from the DVD is much slower than from a hard drive. However, since you have Snow Leopard installed now, there is no point in trying to install Tiger, unless he didn't give you his Admin password; you wouldn't be able to add yourself as a new user or delete his user name without knowing the admin password.
If you did get Tiger installed, then you would have to buy a copy of Snow Leopard on DVD.
I checked the requirements and this machine meets them - running 10.6.8, at least 2 Gig ram, 1.83 GHz Core 2 duo, 60 Gigs free space on the drive.......
Those aren't the complete requirements. It has to be an Early 2009 MacMini, Model Identifier number 3.1, to be compatible with Mavericks. Click on the Apple Menu's, "About This Mac," More Information, then System Report, to locate that information.

Help! My Mac mini won't reboot

Hi. I posted yesterday (in the Safari forum) concerning a problem I was having with Safari 3.0.4 after updating to 10.4.11. Basically, it wouldn't run. Anyway, I did a bunch of searches on the Web (including this forum) to try to figure out what to do. One piece of advice was to move System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.frameworkapplicationservices.fram ework to the desktop.
Well, I did that, and things started acting weird. I tried to copy it back, but the process just seemed to hang. So, I did what I thought was obvious but was apparently a bad idea: I rebooted. Guess what--now my Mac won't reboot. I just get a perpetual hourglass.
I tried doing repairs with Disk Utility, but that didn't fix the problem. I also did a superfluous Hardware Check from the same OS disk, and that turned out normal.
So, what's the solution? A visit to my friendly Apple dealer for some service? Or am I just permanently hosed with no recourse? Please let me know what I can do. Thanks!

Sadly Apple stores are rarely set up for the purpose of completing backups and securing data, so that's not something you can rely on them to do. Some Apple approved service providers are better equipped for doing this, but in the end, it's not a good (or comfortable) proposition to trust your data to anyone else, and the more important that data, the less good, (or comfortable) it is if you have to.
The risk of data loss is relatively small in this situation - particularly if you ran 'repair disk' from disk utility and it reported no errors. That generally would indicate the drive is healthy and there are no indications of damaged data or file structures. Still there is always a risk!
In your situation, if I were faced with the knowledge that I was going to be buying an external drive for future backups, I'd be inclined to buy it now (selecting a firewire-connected hard drive of at least the same, if not much larger capacity than the internal), and then run Disk Utility again, this time (carefully) selecting the external drive, partitioning it under the Apple scheme, then formatting it (MacOS Extended (journaled) and then installing MacOS on it from your 10.3 installer. After that, I'd boot to it by holding down the option key during startup, then selecting the external drive from the list that (after a couple of minutes) should appear. Then the internal drive will be mounted on the desktop under the external which has booted the system. That will give you to option to copy your iPhoto and iTunes libraries to the external drive, and thus secure your data.
Once that's done, you can reboot to the install disk and basically even erase and install, because your data is safe on the external drive!
After the internal is set up again, and fully updated, it then becomes a simple matter of moving your data back to it, and then erasing the external once more, and setting up your backups with SuperDuper! or CCC.
It might sound like a bit of messing about, but that would keep your data safe in your own hands!

Mac mini won't wake from network

Hi, I am confused and need some help.
SInce upgrading to 10.7.2 my mac mini no longer wakes for network access i.e. from ATV2. Worked perfectly before and now it does not.
Also, the screen shows (about once a week) snow on the screen from a wake from sleep. only a reboot solves this.
Any thoughts?

My Mac Mini server (2011) with 10.7.2 has the same problem since 10.7.2 update.

First gen. Mac Mini - won't boot from DVD/CD, or into any safe modes

Hi All!
Last Sunday my Mini seemed to start hanging up, then all of a sudden it was spinning beach ball time. Everything pointed to a hard drive issue, including Disk Warrior, which couldn't replace the directory due to some kind of disk issue (I've forgotten). Was able to get into safe boot mode, tried fsck -y:
+disk 0s3: I/O error+
+Invalid Key length (4,25910)+
+**volume check failed+
+/dev/rdisk 0s3 (hfs) exited with signal 8+
Soon after that I couldn't even get into safe boot mode. Yesterday we replaced the hard drive, but now I can't even boot from the Leopard install disk, or even eject it so I can try booting from the Panther install disk. It's as if it's no longer recognizing the keyboard. I can't boot from the CD/DVD by holding down the "C" key, nor can I boot using the shift key. All paths lead to the flashing question mark/mac face folder...
What else can I try? Could this be a power supply issue?
There is nothing else hooked up to it at present, other than the keyboard and the monitor.
I do have a LaCie mini back-up drive with Panther installed available, if that's any use.
TIA
Rose

Just for the records:
the Apple A1243 aluminium USB keyboard is not available at start up time (in connection with Mini 1,1 OS X 10.6.4, 1GB, late 2006)
I did not get the start screen to login, system hung with frozen wheel - so I was glad to have Boece's advice to use the IR remote for changing to the OS X DVD for startup (remember, no key worked on the keyboard). Nevertheless, Disk First Aid from the DVD have shown no problems with either disk nor allowances - but I have not been able to start from the the mini's disk.
Then tried the usual hints from Apple's documentation - to no avail.
After that I tried to restore from my actual TM backup, which used up some time (it's working rather slow, isn't it?), but then I got hung at the BSD's screen asking me to shut off an restart - another loop.
I guess that the iTunes update (9.2.1) is the culprit, as the last Safari update (5.0.1) is working OK.
At last, I made an erase & install - which worked (I am no in the duty of installing all updates again) so far. Let's see ...

Mac mini won't upgrade from osx 10.7.5 to Mavericks

I have a Mac Mini (mid2010) 2,4GHz Core2 duo 4Gb RAM with OSX 10.7.5 and when I try to download Mavericks through App Store I always get: "...unable to verify your computer.."
NOT a matter of Apple ID (works fine elsewhere), according to Apple support (OS X Mavericks: requisiti di sistema) it should download fine 'n easy but so it isn't.
Have tried a thousand times now, always the same. Anyone any clue?
thanks

it is, I am positive that it is. I'm running OS X 10.7.5 when it says now Yosemite needs
Compatibility: OS X 10.6.8 or later

Powermac G5 won't boot from install dvd.

The hard drive in my Powermac G5 quit, so I put in a new one that was formatted. I put the install DVD (OSX Server 10.4) in and booted. Every time I try I get a kernel panic. Everything else in the computer works. I have tried putting it into target disk mode and installing the OS using another computer, but it won't let me because the computer doesn't run tiger. I have also tried putting the functioning Mac into TDM with the install disk in it, then booting it from that but I still get a kernel panic. The computer was functioning normally before the hard drive crashed.

OK, that's a Late 2005 G5...
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_dual_2.3.htm l
Pre-Installed MacOS:
X 10.4.2 (8E90)
Maximum MacOS:
X 10.5.8
So, If that Install Disc is in fact 10.4.0 as I suspect, then it won't work for your G5... no drivers.
I can only see a couple of options at this point...
1. A newer Install Disc.
2. An older Mac & a Firewire drive to install it to, update to 10.4.11, move FW drive to G5.

BRAND NEW Mac Pro won't boot from Leopard DVD, kernel panics!

I just received my brand new Mac Pro today. It's a BTO machine with the upgrade to the NVIDIA 8800GT, a second optical drive and a Mac OS X Server license. The system has Mac OS X server installed on the default 320GB drive. I decided to use the server license as a virtual machine running in Leopard client. So, I installed 2 new 500GB Seagate 7200.11 (Retail) drives in the machine, zeroed them out in prep for installing Leopard client.
At this point, I pop in a freshly-purchased retail copy of the Leopard DVD and restart. When I try to boot from the DVD and install Leopard to one of the new Seagate drives, I get kernel panics - need to restart the machine. Also tried booting from the Mac OS X Server DVD and this too only caused kernel panics. The DVD's read perfectly from within Mac OS X Server and boot from hard disks is flawless.
I spent an hour on the phone with a level 2 tech at Apple - Tried swapping out the RAM and moving around the DIMMS to no avail. I am at a loss to what this could be. Seems to be a hardware issue and the tech thought it was likely a problem with one of the memory risers but couldn't send replacements. Anyone else with a similar issue?
This is my first Mac and it looks like this Mac Pro is going back for an exchange and I'll have to wait yet another 10-12 days for a replacement to arrive. Bummer.
Am I missing something simple here? Does this seem to be a hardware issue?
If anyone has any ideas before I ship this one back, please write!!!

New Mac Pros will not install the Leopard retail disc. They will only install the Leopard disc which shipped with them labeled Mac Pro. That has always been true. Macs can only boot the system that ships on DVD in the box that came with them, and newer retail releases. They can never boot from an older retail release than what shipped in the box.

Mac Mini won't start-up (while DVD drive makes mechanical noises).

Here is what is going on:
When I turn on my Mac Mini, the DVD drive starts making mechanical noises, exactly the kind of noise it makes while grabbing a CD. It keeps doing this for a while, until it stops. The hard drive never starts spinning and the display remains dark. I have tried the following:
1) Booting from the Leopard DVD: the behavior remains almost the same. The DVD spins, the noises stop but nothing else happens.
2) After manually removing the DVD (nothing else worked) I tried reseting the SMS. I also tried the PMU procedure. As a result my mac mini became a powerful fancy fan.
3) After taking apart the unit (warranty period is over), I even changed the HD (I had another one) but the behavior remained the same.
I simply don't get it. I believe this happened after a power outage.

If it were me ... and if there is more free space on the external hard drive than there is "stuff" on the Mini that needs to be saved ... I would probably connect the Mini to the G5 with a firewire cable, connect the external to the G5, and startup the Mini in Target Disk Mode (which will mount it on the G5's desktop.) Then I'd rescue everything of value from the Mini's hard drive by copying it in small chunks to the external drive.
Then I'd shut everything down, disconnect the cables, and boot the the Mini from the Leopard disc and do a clean install. Then I'd bring the relevant data files back from the external drive.
(The actual details might vary slightly.)
(I see Nick had the same simultaneous thought -- though he expresses the process more clearly than I.)
Message was edited by: Boece

Won't boot from install DVDs

I have an iMac here that refuses to boot from the install DVDs, no matter what.
I tried booting using the alt key, the C key, using the DVD in the Finder and restarting and via the startup disk in the System prefs. I always get one of the two following results: - either the DVD seems to startup, but then puts itself into a loop where it doesn't get to the installer and restarts the computer, - or it simply bypasses the DVD altogether and boots from the the internal hard disk...
I tried using various (full and legit) OS10.5 installation DVDs with the same results as above...
I've performed these operations many times in the past without problem, and It's actually the first I see a Mac that refuses to boot from an install DVD...
I thought maybe if firmware password protection enabled somehow... Would that do that?

You need an installation DVD to turn firmware protection off, ironically.
I doubt it is the issue here, though. If it was enabled, it would show a grey lock when you try to hold down option while booting up.
Is the iMac you are trying to boot from the DVD Leopard compatible as far as processor and RAM? My brother's iMac w/ 256 MB RAM cannot boot Leopard at all.
Message was edited by: Mac OS 9000

Mac Mini won't boot with install disk

tried booting with install disc in and pushing "c" on keyboard and doesn't work. Using a apple wireless keyboard. Also used the keyboard that came with Mac Pro but didn't work nor did a wired logitech.
any ideas?
Thanks!

+What is the source of the idea that the mac aluminum keyboard won't work with the mini?+
Dozens of reports in this forum over the past year.
Keep in mind that by "not working" what was meant was that the startup keys wouldn't work. The Alu keyboard otherwise works fine with the Mini.
It has also been reported that the Alu Keyboard does work for startup keys if it is plugged into a hub with an external power supply.

Older mac mini won't reboot from Install DVD?

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