Put wrong install disk in mac mini

I was trying to recover iMovie on my dad's Mac mini and put the wrong install disk into the drive without realizing it until later. It prompted me to restart and when I did, the white screen showed up and just stayed there. What do I do? It's completely stuck!

Restart again with the mouse button or eject key pressed.
(68545)

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How do I eject the install disk on the mini mac?

In wiping the mini mac, it keeps looping to the erase and install. It won't allow me to shut down or eject the disk to put in the program disk. When the screen gets to the Install Mac OS X, it won't show any disk (the Mac Mini) to install it. I used the Utilities to erase and install, but I can't go any further. It should install with a system lower than the OS X Yosemite.
Message was edited by: llbixler

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I can't boot from OS install USB drive Mac Mini Model 1176

How I can't boot from OS install USB drive, Mac Mini Model 1176

Thank you Eustace Mendis for your answer.
I rebooted the Mac Mini holding the Option key down but it doesn't work. I used an USB drive with O.s 10.7 from Apple that I have used previuosly with other computers and I also tried with a CD install O.S 10.6
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Putting new memory in the Mac Mini - tips and (especially) pitfalls

I had some problems in expanding my Mac Mini's memory. If you're about to do the same thing, you might find my experiences useful. So here they are.
*Opening the case*
I followed advice to use a plastic putty-knife and bought a one specially, but ran into a couple of problems. First, the plastic knives aren't as sharp as the metal ones, so they don't push into the available gap. I had to sharpen the edge before it would go in. The second problem was that, once in, it wasn't rigid enough to open the case; it just bent.
At this point I should have left it and gone back to the drawing board, but I was frustrated and flustered and casting about for anything that would do the job, I ended up using the metal blade of a set-square. This worked, but either because it wasn't flexible enough or because I was a bit coarse in my technique, I did some damage to the clips.
When I had to open the case a second time, I used a small, very thin and flexible cheese-grater and the case popped open like a dream.
*The four corner screws*
A magnetic screwdriver would have been a godsend for this, but since I didn't have one, I just had to tip the Mini up when the screw was loose and hope it didn't disappear into the workings. Fortunately none of them did. So not everything went wrong. Three of the screws were easy to put back - they could either be pushed or dropped into the holes, but the fourth couldn't be got in either way. Thinking about it afterwards, I realised I could have turned the mini upside down and put the screw on top of the screwdriver and got it in that way. But what I actually did was bite the end off a toothpick, jam it into the screw head and then push it in the hole. Worked a treat.
Note. My instructions said not to worry about the spring on the Airport antenna -"It's not going to fly off." Maybe not, but it can come loose and is then a pain to put back. Suddenly the wire holding the antenna doesn't seem long enough. Before you know it the antenna cable has come off completely, leaving you with the choice to undo all the screws again or forget about using Airport.
*Lifting the chassis*
Some advice tells you to undo all cables and take the chassis off completely, but the advice I followed suggested just undoing the fan control wire and propping the the chassis on a book with the others still attached. This worked fine. I was nervous about pulling on the wire to release the fan control, so I used a fingernail to get under the rim of the plug itself and popped it off that way.
*Fitting the RAM*
This was the easy part, though it didn't snap in as positively as some I've done.
*Putting back the fan control wire*
I put the wire back, as I thought, and powered up the Mini with the lid still off. I checked that the memory was properly installed and was delighted that it was. I vaguely noticed that the Mini was making a lot of noise, but thought that might be because the case was off. In my defence, none of the instructions identified the wire I was disconnecting as the fan control wire; they just called it "the little wire in front". Anyway, I put the lid back on, then realised I had a problem and took it off again. I learned (from Boece) that "the little wire in front" was indeed the fan control wire and saw that it was loose. It took me several tries to get it in. It's in an awkward place, is very small and sometimes appears to go in when it really hasn't. But whereas a few times I thought it had gone in, when it did go in I knew it was in. One of those things you only ever do once, but could do so much more easily the second time.
*Putting the lid back*
Some advice suggests just pushing the lid back, but you can cause damage that way. The clips can get bent out of shape. The best way is to use your cheese-grater or whatever, to gently ease the lid back on.
Conclusion
This was a bad experience; I had visions of ending up with an unusable machine and a void warranty. But in fact it I now have a quiet, working 2GB Mac Mini - and the nightmares have almost stopped. If you're about to try it, take comfort from the fact that you couldn't have as bad an experience as I had. Probably.
Michael

Pretty much describes my experience. I used a relatively thin metal putty knife to take the case off. Not to difficult doing one side at a time. I totally agree, a magnetic screw driver would have been very helpful when replacing the bracket. By far the biggest problem I had was the fan control wire. Very short cord in an awkward location. End of story - all back together with 2gb or ram. Probably toook 35-40 minutes (Including 10-15 fooling around with that lousy fan control wire.)

Can i install bootcamp on mac mini snow leopard server 2010

hello,there are 2 harddisks on a mac mini server 2010 (snow leopard server.)i want to use the other hdd for installing Windows home server 2011 x64 .
but there is no bootcamp on the server.(do i have to download it?)
how can i do this,or do i have to use parallels desktop.
i have also a mac mini and a macbook pro and an alienware and a clevo laptop so i want the 2 servers seperate(and the mac-server on all the time)

You would need to install SL (non sever) on you Mac Mini Server.
You may be able to install the nonsever version on your 2nd HDD
-Partition you 2nd HDD to the max BootCamp Partition
-Install Windows Home Server on the BootCamp Partition (don't know of Windows Server is supported)
So you would have:
hdd1 - SnowLeopard Server
hdd2 - SnowLeopard (non-server) + Bootcamp Partition
Scenario 2:
If you don't have a need for SL Server SW, then wipe out the system and put only the regular SL (non sever) on disk 1. Partition Disk2 for Bootcamp only.
hdd1- SL (non-sever)
hdd2 - Bootcamp
I really don't know if you can copy the Bootcamp app onto SL Server OS to create a Bootcamp partition.

Mountain Lion not installing on 2009 Mac Mini

I have tried a few times to install the new Mountain Lion OS X onto my 2009 Mac Mini. I have gone through the basic checklists of what to do prior to installing but the install keeps on getting stuck after the original download and restart.
Once downloaded and the install process has begun it restarts and then the OS X install screen apears and it shows how many minutes it will take to install.
It remains at 34 minutes, the second time I attempted an install I left the computer on overnight to make sure it wasn't installing very slowly, it was left on for over 12 hours but did not advance in the process.
Details on the computer:
2009 Mac Mini
Software: version 10.7.5
Processor: 2.26 GHz Intel Core Duo
Memory: 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Hard Drive Space Available: 52.26GB
I have viewed many other problem threads here based on installing Mountain Lion and the hard disk having problems. My computer will just not advance past the very beginning of the install and I am able to reboot the install disk and retry or just go back to OS X Lion so I can use the computer again.
Anyone have a tip or something I can look into to see what may be the problem??

Found this elsewhere after a couple weeks of searching, inserting an old install DVD worked;
Ralan New Zealand
This helped meRe: Hang on Install of Mountain Lion
Aug 18, 2012 5:40 PM (in response to Vanisle)
Funnily enough I had the same problem yesterday.. tried 10 times but installer kept hanging at 34mins as well.. I noticed that while it was loading it was accessing the DVD drive.. with nothing in it then hanging.. I put in an installer disk for Snow Leopard, and the ML installer loaded and installed.. don't ask me why, no idea but give it a try..

Install Bootcamp on Mac Mini late 2014 Yosemite Fails?

Trying to install bootcamp with Win 8.1 pro on a Mac Mini (Late 2014) under Yosemite and get to the screen on Win 8 side which says 'Where do you want to install Windows?' and I choose the "Drive 0 Partition 4: BOOTCAMP" and the next button never becomes enabled.
There is a message saying "Windows can't be installed on drive 0 partition 4" and an addition message box which says "Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. Windows must be installed to a partition formatted as NTFS".
At this point I'm dead in the water -- cannot proceed.
Formatting the drive doesnt work and just screws up the whole process.
I've redone this quite a few times and end up in the same situation everytime.
I also tried with Win7 install I had but that failed completely and it never really proceeded after rebooting from Mac side.
Any ideas?
Is bootcamp busted on Yosemite? I dont easily have another machine I can try it on.
Is bootcamp busted on Mac Mini? Has anyone tried bootcamp on new late 2014 Mac Mini?
Thanks
James

Hi Steve
Its not a fusion drive. The full spec is
2.6GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz)
16GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
Intel Iris Graphics
I wanted the size of the drive large as I'm going to use it for just a small amount of Mac work and a very large amount of Windows work.
I did actually click format during a number of the attempts I've tried. It generally formatted and left me no better advanced. Generally it would removed the word BOOTCAMP from the drive. I've even tried deleting the partition and reestablishing in -- that doesnt help either.
My latest attempt has seen that the whole bootcamp partitioning structure is truly busted. When I go back to the Mac and enter bootcamp assistant it says I cannot do anything now and tells me the partitions cannot be changed. Now I'm really not in a great position.
James

Need to restore TM backup to 2nd HD w/o install disks (1 mac)

hi all,
i've run into a quandry. my powermac g5 primary drive (OSX10-5) is throwing i/o errors. i have a recent TM backup, and would like to restore it to my secondary drive (MacOS), and reboot from that drive. then i can work on the primary drive. the panther install on MacOS no longer boots, so i want get 10.5 on that drive.
my dvr-116d cannot read my leopard install disk (nor any other disk). i have a WD mybook -- it's my TM drive. (how about that for irony?) i followed the thread on the WD and DVR mis-interaction, but none of the suggested fixes have worked (no WD plist file to delete, have updated drivers and firmware, rebooted without drive, etc). thus, i can't restart from the leopard install disk. my other systems are all snow leopard, which won't run on the g5, so that rules out the 2nd mac method.
i have made few attempts without success. first, using disk utility (DU), i tried to create an image from the TM OSX10-5 backup. it hung after 30 hours of "creating disk image..." second, i tried using TM restore to different target to put the files on MacOS, and ended up with /Volumes/MacOS/OSX10-5. using DU again, i turned that into a disk image, reformatted MacOS, and restored from that disk image. the result won't boot properly (system tries to booth, then powers off in about 15 seconds). on reflection, the FAQ did say "to restore a data-only volume to an alternate location", so i shouldn't have expected it to work. i'm currently looking into migration assistant...
the primary disk is on borrowed time, so i'd be grateful for any/all ideas/help. (too bad i can't just dd the backup onto a reformatted volume like the old days.)
many thanks,
bert

Another alternative for booting the Leopard install disc would be to "borrow" the DVD drive from one of your newer computers via FireWire Target Disk mode. You would need an appropriate Firewire cable that could connect the two computers.
In this situation you can't set up FireWire Target Disk mode with the Intel as the host computer, but you should still be able to use TDM "the other way", using the computer with the functioning DVD drive as the TDM target and and running the Leopard DVD from the G5 as host. The newer Intel Mac is used only for its DVD drive, and is otherwise totally passive.
To try this, you could do the following:
Shut down the G5. Insert the Leopard DVD into the other computer, and restart the other computer while holding down the T key, booting the other computer into FireWire Target Disk Mode . Connect it to the G5 with the FW cable, and then start the G5 while holding down the Option key. This should boot the G5 into the startup manager, and hopefully you will see the Leopard OS X install DVD as one of the startup choices. Select that, and try to boot from it.
Message was edited by: jsd2

How to install OSX on mac mini G4 when no OS is present?

hello, I am very new to all of this. Here is some back ground, I just picked up an older mac mini not sure what modle or anything I just know its older i think 2005 or 2006. I pluged it in to my tv and turned it on and all that came up was a folder with a question mark in it and it changed to another image I dont remember what it was, the IT people at best buy said that it doesnt have an OS, they also said I could put one on a usb flash drive and boot it from there. My question is, if that is possable or if I need to get the disk from apple? and my only other computer is running on windows 7. I have an 8GB flash drive if the OSX will fit on that. I also read somewere that I need to do something to the usb drive to make it so the mac mini will boot off the usb drive. I can provide the last three ( it is an 11 diget S/N) they are "RHT". If that helps.
Thank you so much and I am awating any help I can get.
(sorry is stuff is miss spelled)

start up the computer with the Option key held down
Neil, are you sure? My memory is the Option key boot was not available in 10.4. We had to hold the C key down to boot from an OS cd. That was a long time ago, your memory is probably better than mine. But I had to ask.
OS 10.5 :

Lion won't install on my Mac mini. Why?

I have a 2 yr old Mac mini with 2.53 GHz Core Duo CPU, 4 GB of RAM and it's running 10.6.8. I just downloaded Lion but the installer says it can't install on my HD. Why not? I cannot find any info about what to do.
Is there some software on my computer that the installer does not like?
Does Lion need a completely new partition to install on?
If so, why is this not mentioned anywhere ?
Thankyou for your help.

Lion creates a recovery area with a minimal version of OS X and it may be unable to do so due to use over the years, and possibly other resizing operations (Boot Camp). It could just need more space, if you only have less than 8gb free. Lion shuffles and merges the two systems when it upgrades. You can burn the image downloaded from App Store by finding the dmg file inside the "Install Mac OS X Lion.app" bundle, dragging it into disk utility, then burning from there.
Otherwise, you can appropriate a MBR/BIOS formatted 4GB thumbdrive, 8GB of either EFI or MBR/BIOS thumbdrive, flash storage device, or external hard drive, and format it, using the restore operation through disk utility to copy the contents of the installer disk to the media. Exposed via the alt key before the Apple logo, should show the bootable media, where you can format over the former installation.
As always, backup your files when upgrading. I recommend if your installion is over a year old to wipe and upgrade if you can't make otherwise the media bootable, using your 10.6 recovery dvd.
If you cannot find an external medium to backup your files before the upgrade, if you need to format via disk utility (Through 10.6 media), you can consider Dropbox as an option (2GB free account).
It's not uncommon for the partition to simply refuse operations, including upgrades and resizing.

I want to perform a clean install on my mac mini, How do I do this? I have no discs.

I have a new mac mini. I coppied over stuff from my old pc and the files coppied mulpitle times and thisgs got messy. I would just like to start from scratch. how can I do this?

As mende1 suggested and as I stated. Make sure you have a WiFi or ethernet connection to the Internet.
Back up your system with Time Machine first. Then you have to reboot your Mac and at the startup chime, press/hold the COMMAND+R keys to boot into your Recovery HD. From there you will see an OS X Utilities Menu screen. Select Disk Utilities from that menu screen and follow step 2 in mende1's instructions. Then close Disk Utilities and select Reinstall OS X from the menu screen. Follow the prompts to download OS X from Apple which will start the install process after the download.
mende1's 1st step instructs you to use Apple's Internet Recovery which will do the same thing as above. It just takes longer to boot into Apples' Recovery HD. The Command+R uses the Recovery HD on your hard drive.
Good Luck!

Mavericks won't install on newest mac mini fusion drive

I have a mac mini, latest version. I have a fusion drive.
Mavericks won't install on that drive. I get this message:
This disk doesn't use the GUID Partition Table scheme. Use Disk Utility to change the partition scheme. Select the Disk, choose the
partition tab, select the volume Scheme and then click Options.
Well, I did that, up to "choose the partition tab." Then it says "you may only split this partition into two. To do this, click +."
I did that, and there were two partitions. the only option left is to select apply, which I didn't.
The "options" were still greyed out.
So now what?
Thanks for any input.

Lion creates a recovery area with a minimal version of OS X and it may be unable to do so due to use over the years, and possibly other resizing operations (Boot Camp). It could just need more space, if you only have less than 8gb free. Lion shuffles and merges the two systems when it upgrades. You can burn the image downloaded from App Store by finding the dmg file inside the "Install Mac OS X Lion.app" bundle, dragging it into disk utility, then burning from there.
Otherwise, you can appropriate a MBR/BIOS formatted 4GB thumbdrive, 8GB of either EFI or MBR/BIOS thumbdrive, flash storage device, or external hard drive, and format it, using the restore operation through disk utility to copy the contents of the installer disk to the media. Exposed via the alt key before the Apple logo, should show the bootable media, where you can format over the former installation.
As always, backup your files when upgrading. I recommend if your installion is over a year old to wipe and upgrade if you can't make otherwise the media bootable, using your 10.6 recovery dvd.
If you cannot find an external medium to backup your files before the upgrade, if you need to format via disk utility (Through 10.6 media), you can consider Dropbox as an option (2GB free account).
It's not uncommon for the partition to simply refuse operations, including upgrades and resizing.

Install fails? Mac Mini won't work??

I partitioned my Mac Mini, giving it 15GB of space. Went into install and I get:
Setup is inspecting your hardware configuration_
for maybe a second. Then I have a black screen. Anything particular I'm doing wrong? I've heard that you may need an Apple Cinema Display to install Boot Camp on the mini... true?
Dell Display thru Mini-DVI to VGA cable
Fully updated 10.5.8 Mac Mini (2 days old)
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scratched disk

2 x 1TB hard disk in mac mini server, possible?

Hi to all of you,
I see the Mac Mini comes with 2x 500GB hard disk. Since you can now find 1TB hard disk on the Internet I was wondering if the mac mini server would support replacing the 2x500GB HDD by 2 x 1TB HDD?
Anyone has tried it?
Would it support it?
Dag

I wonder the same thing. Power isn't the issue, though, all these drives should draw low enough power that the Mac Mini should be able to handle it, neither should cooling be an issue, since the Mac Mini is AFAIK not passively cooled.
However, most laptop 2.5" drives these days are 9.5mm high, the 1TB drives have the older, these days less common 12.5mm high form factor. So the real question is: does the Mac Mini provide the ability to mount 12.5mm high drives.
FW drives are NOT an option: less performance, and external cables are a recipe for disaster, particularly with any sort of server. Lose cables, corroded connectors, pulling on the wrong cable, separate power supplies that can independently fail, etc. etc.
I'd rather have a 1TB server with a RAID-1 configuration than with a RAID-0 setup...
...and while the thing is open, toss 8GB RAM in...

Put wrong install disk in mac mini

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