Lost my Mac partition... Or how I killed my Mac

Hi all,

I hope someone here can save me a trip to my local "genius."

I thought that it would be a great idea to convert my mac mini into a windows server for the office. I read up on it and was supposed to install easily.

I ran bootcamp. Booted from the win cd and since I didn't want to use the mac partition at all, I deleted it! But I was careful not to delete the 200mbpartition that had the bootcamp loader(?) On it.

Following this the win install was aborted.

I tried to restart with my leopard DVD, but I started getting the "no bot disk... Message." tried the option button, the original Mac mini disks, everything. And nothing worked until I started up the computer with a win cd that that i have at home....

It's installing now.

Have i killed my mac and turned it into a pc?

I thought that i had fried my Mac, until in a

Update

The win install just failed as well. I got a hardware configuration error.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance for even reading my posts.

S.

Samsixx said:

I thought that it would be a great idea to convert my mac mini into a windows server for the office.

Click to expand...

Might have been easier to just buy a cheap used Windows computer for this purpose. Why waste a perfectly good Mac-Mini for this "lowly" task!

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Might have been easier to just buy a cheap used Windows computer for this purpose. Why waste a perfectly good Mac-Mini for this "lowly" task!

- Nick

Click to expand...

Tell me about it! Lol

The irony is that I am probably going to be doing just that...

Try resetting the PRAM/NVRAM first, then use your OS X install DVD to boot the machine and re-install OS X.

chscag said:

Try resetting the PRAM/NVRAM first, then use your OS X install DVD to boot the machine and re-install OS X.

Click to expand...

I just tried...

And it was weird. I got the Macos startup sound, a grey screen and then a windows error message... "windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem..."

I am going to look into different ways of resetting it...

I just tried to reset the PMU and that didn't do much good. Now my fan doesn't spin down.... And the same windows message appears.

I may have to bring it in.

That is strange. The PRAM/NVRAM reset should have cleared the memory of the Windows boot. Did you try booting from your Snow Leopard DVD right after the reset? I don't understand why it didn't work...

In aineyrd

chscag said:

That is strange. The PRAM/NVRAM reset should have cleared the memory of the Windows boot. Did you try booting from your Snow Leopard DVD right after the reset? I don't understand why it didn't work...

Click to expand...

Yep. (although it is just leopard, as The mini doesn't have enough ram.)

When you have the leopard or snow leopard disc inside your computer, turn it off, turn it back on. As soon as you hear the chime, hold on the left option key and keep holding it until you see a mouse cursor. You should then see an icon of your cd. Not sure if you were starting up like or by holding c. That should get you to disk utility where you can figure your hard disk out and reload your os! Good luck

In aineyrd

chscag said:

That is strange. The PRAM/NVRAM reset should have cleared the memory of the Windows boot. Did you try booting from your Snow Leopard DVD right after the reset? I don't understand why it didn't work...

Click to expand...

Yep. (although it is just leopard, as The mini doesn't have enough ram.)

Tried all kinds of variations with the option button: holding as you push power button, push it right after startup, etc.

I wonder if the keyboard might not be recognized. (I am using an "aluminum" keyboard from my iMac. I vaguely remember something about compatibility with older machines...

Anyway, I booked an appointment this morning with a genius. I have never been so completely and quickly defeated by a computer! Lol.

I'll report back on how it was fixed.

S.

Frank4 said:

As soon as you hear the chime, hold on the left option key

Click to expand...

Wonders why the left option key ??

Fixed.

It was the aluminum keyboard that was preventing the boot from cd. The genius was using a keyboard (circa 2006/7) and it worked fine.

Thanks for all the recommendations guys. They would have all worked if I'd been using the right equipment.

Peace all.

Thanks for posting back with the fix. Enjoy and return often.