Did I Break the Mac mini?

Hoping someone can shed some light on this...

I switched off the power supply to my bf's mini, without a proper shut down, as I tripped the surge protector/power supply. Now, the mini freezes in start-up. It either freezes about half-way (the twirling dial at the bottom of the screen simply stops twirling), or it throws up a message that says the Mini must be restarted. I restart it, and either the same message appears or it freezes up as mentioned earlier in this paragraph.

My bf is not all that computer literate, and as he blames me for breaking his mini, he is holding me responsible to fix it. What should I be doing?

I had thought of trying to boot it up from the start-up disk (a trick I had learned from my days with the iMac) and I asked him where his startup disk, or whatever it is called, and of course, he has no idea where it is, nor does he want to look for it.

Any ideas?

And thanks for your help.

just curious. were you performing any software updates when it shut down? but yeah, the startup disk thing would work. really need to find it. then you can run disk repair and see what is going on. good luck.

The screen was not on, so I am assuming it was in sleep mode, so I do not know if it would have been performing software updates at the time. Silly me, I thought it was off, so I didn't think about shutting it down.

And yes, I agree with the need for the startup disk. I guess I will have to go into "nag" mode in order to get him off my computer and to go looking for his disk.

Thanks for your help, J.

oh, what should I do if he cannot locate his start-disk? Is there a possibility of getting a replacement? And where would I go for that?

you could contact apple for a new disc. is it still under applecare?

Mine did the same thing on the first day of purchase apple store replaced it for me but Its a problem with the ram I believe. Did you happen to knock it off whatever it was on when this happened?

Try this. Ignore the Firefox and Onyx (for the moment) references.

I think someone was already thinking what I was going to say, which is that shutting it down like that while the hard drive was in use corrupted it. If there was some action going on at the time, that's probably what happened. Someone mentioned RAM, but I fail to see how this could be the reason. RAM, in any computer, resets once the power is turned off. I don't know. Anything is possible, I suppose.

Brown Study...You did It!

Your advice worked perfectly!!! Although, I did get impatient waiting for the system to not be modified, so I tried rebooting after maybe seven or eight cycles through the "fsck -fy". But low and behold, it booted up normally.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And to everyone that helped out: thanks, guys. I love mac people.;D

Ibreakformacs said:

Although, I did get impatient waiting for the system to not be modified, so I tried rebooting after maybe seven or eight cycles through the "fsck -fy". But low and behold, it booted up normally.

Click to expand...

Glad it worked! But if the message still said the disk was modified, I'd run the fsck -fy until it doesn't, because there would still be something wrong.

To keep any small problems from snowballing again, run fsck -fy every couple of weeks or so, or when then spirit moves you. You could also download Applejack (at versiontracker.com) that you access the same way as you did the fsck -fy. Applejack does a pile of stuff before the GUI kicks in, including fsck -fy, fixing permissions and a lot more.

MainMenu would be good to have, as well, and/or Onyx. MainMenu and Onyx also can run the daily, weekly and monthly crons (chronologicals).

You are just the gift that keeps on giving, Brown Study.

Thanks for the helpful info. I will ,pass it on to the BF, but more likely, I will just do it all for him.

Again, thank you so much for your help.

Mini Startup problem too

I also have what I think is a similar problem with a mini. Yesterday it just would'nt start up, you get the grey screen with the Apple logo and the kernel spins for about 10 seconds, then the dreaded "you need to restart your mac" window comes on. Tried the usual restarts, power off's, mains disconnects, pram zapping, to no avail. Started by using the install disc and ran Disk utility first aid which was unable to fix the problem which says there is an invalid node structure and problems with the B - tree. Can anyone help me please? Or does it need to go to the doctors?? Its my mum's machine so you could save me from nagging worse than death!!!!

If Disk Utility can't repair the drive, you may need stronger medicine (Tech Tool Pro, Disk Warrior or Drive Genius). Each will cost you about $100, but these tools can be lifesavers.

so it may be something I could fix with disk warrior?

You could try an archive and install from the install disk. This will quarantine the old system in a folder named Previous System or Old System (or something of the sort) and install a new one, leaving most of everything else untouched. You could then drag whatever you still need out of that quarantine folder.

It's more awkward than a fast repair by Disk Warrior, but the price is right.

If you try this, don't forget to run the software updates; the new system will be only as up to date as the install disk.

Whether you use Disk Warrior or archive and install, run fsck -fy or boot from the install disk and run Disk Utility regularly to prevent small problems from becoming a big one.

Let us know what happened.

I personally run DiskWarrior once per month in order to nip small problems in the bud.