2010 mac mini overheating startup

Hi, I've been looking all over google (mostly these forums) looking for what could be wrong with my mac.

I started having this issue actually about a year after I bought my mac. It would just turn off without warning and I tried googling unexpected shutoffs of the mac, but nothing turned up.

This would happen off and on, but not so much that I felt I needed to shell out for repair. One day though, about a year ago, it just wouldn't turn on. I opened it just to see if everything was alright in there, dust maybe? I touched the little black part by the fan and it was scalding.

I then googled overheating macminis and nothing really would turn up other than doing PRAM resets, so I did that, and it came back to life. Off and on I would do this, along with power cycling, shooting compressed air in the vents, and hoping to God it would come back to life and it did.

Now though, I can't get anything to work and it's been like this for three days now. This is my first mac and supposedly these things are supposed to be troopers, but my old HP lasted me longer than this thing.

One thing though, now after the gray screen an apple logo pops up, a little bar appears under the apple logo and starts loading. I do think it downloaded a system update the day prior to this problem, so maybe it's related?

I also remember one of the times it got this serious, I had just recently updated to Maverick- which is when I ran the PRAM reset.

Thank you for your time!

G'day and welcome to the forums.

You have been tolerating kernal panic attacks for three years? WOW. What you need to do after a shut down is go into Console on reboot and post here what is reported. How do you know it is overheating and what are the temperatures? An app like iStat will record these for you.

harryb2448 said:

G'day and welcome to the forums.

You have been tolerating kernal panic attacks for three years? WOW. What you need to do after a shut down is go into Console on reboot and post here what is reported. How do you know it is overheating and what are the temperatures? An app like iStat will record these for you.

Click to expand...

Hm, just googled kernel panic attack, and that display doesn't come up- it just turns off.

I know it's overheating because, like I said, it's super hot- you could fry an egg on it. So what I'm thinking is, that its turning off is some sort of security measure for the mac where it shuts down if it gets too hot.

I'll try and see if I can get into console.

[edit]

I was able to get the second turn on sound from the PRAM restart, but it just does the same thing:

progress bar under apple logo while mac starts getting super hot as it finishes

Thanks!

Do you know if the fan is working in the Mini? If the fan or temperature sensor is defective, that will cause the heat sink to become very hot as it tries to conduct the heat away from the CPU. That in turn will cause the machine to shut down.

You should have attended to getting it repaired when it first started those symptoms. It may be too late now if parts have been overheated too many times. I would start saving for a new Mini....

chscag said:

Do you know if the fan is working in the Mini? If the fan or temperature sensor is defective, that will cause the heat sink to become very hot as it tries to conduct the heat away from the CPU. That in turn will cause the machine to shut down.

You should have attended to getting it repaired when it first started those symptoms. It may be too late now if parts have been overheated too many times. I would start saving for a new Mini....

Click to expand...

Yeah, the fan is working and I've blasted it many times with air, so there's no dust.

Hm...thanks. To be honest though, not sure if I'll be buying another mini.

metalclay said:

Yeah, the fan is working and I've blasted it many times with air, so there's no dust.

Hm...thanks. To be honest though, not sure if I'll be buying another mini.

Click to expand...

Did you actually open the mini up to blow out any dust/dirt?

Mac-Mini's are fine. Many folks own them wothout any issues. I wouldn't hesitate to buy one myself.

In fact...of all the threads we get here at Mac-Forums with computer troubles...I would say Mac-Mini's are probably the model we get the fewest complaints/issues.

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Did you actually open the mini up to blow out any dust/dirt?

Mac-Mini's are fine. Many folks own them wothout any issues. I wouldn't hesitate to buy one myself.

In fact...of all the threads we get here at Mac-Forums with computer troubles...I would say Mac-Mini's are probably the model we get the fewest complaints/issues.

- Nick

Click to expand...

I just took off the plate at the bottom and blasted with the small straw in and around the inside of it.

Yeah, I dunno. I actually really like mac, the software is great and the hardware seemed great too, but guess it failed me this time. Oh well.

Anyway, I was able to somewhat salvage this!

I knew my macmini was on its last legs, so I made sure to back up all the really important things on my macbook.I then kept googling on the problem and it seems most people just ended up having to reformat.

Here's what I tried, but it seems like it's having the same issue in not being able to actually finish the job!

1) I got off my wireless keyboard and plugged in an old windows keyboard
2) Did a PRAM reset by holding OPTION+CMD+P+R (windows+alt+p+r)
3) My computer still turned off, but when it turned on the startup sound was normal volume
4) Turned on computer and held (CMD+R)
5) It took me to the recover screen
6) I tried going straight into reinstalling but when I tried, my Macintosh HD was grayed out so I couldn't install in there.
7) I turned it off and back on again (unplugged it)
8) This time I went to Disk Utility
9) I tried erasing the Macintosh HD but it wouldn't unmount (so I'm thinking this whole SNAFU was a result of updating my mac, since the HD was maybe programmed to first update itself then let me use it, but it never updated, so it never got permission to unmount)
10) I uplugged it again
11) Went back to Disk Utility and verified the disk
12) It finished doing that, then I tried erasing and it worked
13) Did the reinstall through wifi, downloaded all components
14) Took me back to the recover screen instead of restarting

I'm thinking this may be a RAM issue then? It seems to be having the same problem as before...it has progresses, and reaches the end, and when it finally comes time to do what it has to...it forgets? Where does that data it downloads get stored to restore the computer? RAM, no?

[tl;dr]
Tried reformatting, after finishing downloading additional components online, it doesn't restart automatically- it goes back to the recovery screen with the "install" option grayed out, but still clickable...

Any help

[edit]

starting to think it may be the PRAM battery...

[edit2]

was able to reformat it and everything is running like new. Not too bad I suppose, I used to have to reformat my windows machine every half year, and this is the first time in three years, so...eh.

thanks guys! learned a lot about macs!