Mac Mini stuck on apple screen

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My wife's 2007 Mac Mini is stuck on the apple startup screen and I cant get it to do anything.

I put the Snow Leopard install CD in and rebooted while holding option key. It gave me both the hard drive and the install cd as options to boot from. When selecting the cd, it goes to the white apple logo screen again.

I tried booting from both of them... does no good, just holds on the apple logo screen. We left that screen up overnight to see if it would finally give us some love, but doesn't do any good.

I rebooted and held down c... just goes to apple logo screen.

Holding down shift does nothing... just the apple logo screen, no safe mode.

I even rebooted and held down command+option+p+r to clear the PRAM... did that 3 times back to back.. didn't help.

I am running out of ideas here.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on?
 
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I did command+v to see what was going on... hope it helps any... here is a screenshot:

50Umj.jpg


Edit: the last line you see there is all you see... it just hangs there.
 

chscag

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Is that Mac Mini yours or is it one that belongs to the University of California?
 
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I think that is part of the BSD GNU licensing stuff. OSX is a fork of NeXT (forked by Steve Jobs himself and then sold to Apple) which is a fork of BSD (as in FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD) which is licensed by Berkley University which is part of the University of California.

This was purchased new by a friend of mine... then sold to me. So I can guarantee it doesn't belong or never has belonged to any university.
 
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A side note... not sure if this has anything to do with it or not.

Whenever we rebooted the mini within the last few months, we always had to reset the date and time on it. I figured the mb battery was dead or something.

As I said, not sure if that is relevant or not, just something that I just thought about.
 
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I had this same thing happen to me. I called Applecare and they told me to take it to the applestore. I didn't. I just re-installed the OS from the start.

Some of the solutions I found online was to actually boot from an external hard drive that has your OS or time machine back up in it, then try to repair the hard drive in the computer from there. I didn't have that.

I guess the biggest thing is that your Option start from CD doesn't work, so you're pretty much out of all options of trying to fix this.

Try this. Most of the things I read were hardware related faults - hard drive.

Intel-based Macs: Using Apple Hardware Test

Press the power button to turn on your computer.

Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears. An Internet-enabled connection via Ethernet or Wi-Fi is required to use this feature.

Note: Some Macintosh computers that shipped with OS X Lion support the use of Apple Hardware Test over the Internet. These computers will start up to an Internet-based version of AHT if the hard drive does not contain AHT.

It takes a minute or so for Apple Hardware Test to start up and inspect your hardware configuration. While this is taking place, an icon appears on the screen:

When the process is complete, select your language and click the right arrow. If you aren't using a mouse, you can use the up and down arrows to select a language and then press the Return key.

The Apple Hardware Test console appears. You can choose which sort of test or tests to perform:

To perform all of the basic tests, click the Test button or press the "T" key or the Return key.

To perform a more thorough diagnostic test, select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox under the Test button before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

To exit AHT, click Restart or Shut Down at the bottom of the window.
 
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Apple Hardware Test has not been downloadable since G4 computers. If you have a G4, here is a link to the downloads. When you have the .dmg file on the desktop, drag it to Disk utility, left hand pance, pop in a CD and burn. It will be bootable. Referring to Lion, this could be the Recovery Partition. Apple Hardware Test comes on disc one of the original system install discs that came with a new computer.


Apple Hardware Test Images
 
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I have the intel version.

i tried the T option, got no hardware test page at all... just that dang white apple logo.

I tried to boot up the install cd so I could either use the recover and diagnostic tools or do a reinstall... but when I try and boot from the cd, it just does the white apple page... even when using option and selecting the cd drive.
 
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Got the original system install discs that came with the Mini? Probably a version of OS X.4, in fact checking Mactracker OS X.4.10 to be precise. Pop in disc one, boot and after the chime hold down 'D' and run extended mode as suggested.

Sadly no original disc no AHT. Always insist on these disc when buying a pre-loved machine.
 

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