MINI MAC 1.66Ghz start up fail

hi,
I recently bought a second hand mac Mini 1.66 Ghz and when starting up it gave me a scrambled up screen in a few languages, the top let started with "panic".

So, I put in a Leopard CD in (over tiger as advised was installed) and 1 hour later got a screen saying install successful and restart, when restarted it went back to the aforementioned screen beginning with "panic"

Cooked? anyone please, any help would be appreciated, thanks

That's called a kernel panic...and most times it's hardware related. Furthermore...MANY times it's related to bad ram or incompatible ram. My suggestion would be to pull all the ram...and only install 1 stick of ram at a time to see if you get stability.

Your Mac-mini has 2 ram slots (not sure if both are filled). If both are filled...remove 1, and restart. See if you have stability. If so, great. If not try the other stick by itself. If all your ram appears bad...then you could try ordering a new stick of ram from OWC or Crucial:

Performance Upgrades; FireWire USB SATA Storage; Memory, more at OWC
RAM Memory Upgrade: Dell, Mac, Apple, HP, Compaq. USB drives, SSD at Crucial.com

If your Mac-mini only has 1 stick of ram in it...then it is either bad (dead)...or not Mac compatible.

...or it could be a different hardware problem. But this is unlikely...since your Mac-mini sounds like it boots properly.

HTH,

- Nick

thanks pigoo3 / Nick,

Tries your suggestion but same problem. Also tried holding down D when starting and result was "no hardware fail"

so it's now at the mac shop for a flu vac

Just a guess, bad RAM or maybe the Hard Drive is dying and corrupted the install. The 1.66 Minis are quite old now so the drive could have issues. If the Apple Hardware Test said there was nothing wrong, that is interesting, but there are some times it's missed a minor fault.

vn3801 said:

thanks pigoo3 / Nick,

Tries your suggestion but same problem. Also tried holding down D when starting and result was "no hardware fail"

so it's now at the mac shop for a flu vac

Click to expand...

Be careful how much you spend repairing this computer...it's probably worth under $200.

- Nick