Mac Mini Booting problems

[holdensrock8]

hey there just wondering can help me out. this happened a few years ago but now i have decided to get back to it. But my mac mini late 2012 model will try and boot up
but it wont get much further past the mac chime sound. i have tried a few things but hasn't been successful (e.g) changed the hard drive to another drive with mac os and reset the PRAM and even changed the PRAM battery just in case it was flat still nothing. tried different ram too
if anyone could that would be awesome.

 

[krs]

How much further than the chime does it get, ie what do you actually see on the screen at the point where you think it stops booting?

 

[holdensrock8]

well it can vary. it can play the whole chime then sometimes it only flecks the light on then turns off. but then can show white on the screen then turn off

 

[krs]

You said you changed the hard drive with an installed macOS...which version of macOS is on the hard drive?

I assume you don't have a bootable external to try or a USB installer of a suitable macOS.

I use the same 2012 Mini right now and the start up chime doesn't always play when I boot up, so I don't think the chime playing or not is any indication of a problem.

 

[holdensrock8]

i run high serria on the drive and have tried a usb installer
um i was just using the chime as a time it stays on for. i could send a video to you to help with what im saying

 

[pm-r]

Have you tried using Safe Boot Mode (Press and Hold shift key on boot) or booting from the Recovery HD (Command + R)?

The latter may not work if you had not cloned the complete hard drive and included the Recovery HD partition that Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) Is able to do.

How many Chime Reset sequences did you get when you tried doing the PRAM Reset and keeping the keys held down??



- Patrick
======

 

[holdensrock8]

hey there Patrick
from memory now i was able to get the mac mini to boot to a apple logo once and it got 1/3 of the way loaded then it shut off then it kept on starting up then crashing and then it will keep on trying to boot then crash and will keep doing that till i hold the power button to turn it off. terms of any recovery modes or reset PRAM have tried that still nothing. Will try safe mode boot and get back to you now
thanks

 

[holdensrock8]

update: it now brings up the apple logo and will load the status bar just under halfway and then shuts off but wont automatically restart itself

 

[chscag]

It sounds like your Mini may have a bad logic board. You've swapped out the hard drive, tried to boot from a USB installer, and also tried safe mode. None of which works.

One last thing to try - swap out the memory modules with known good ones. Let us know.

 

[pm-r]

One last thing to try - swap out the memory modules with known good ones. Let us kno

Wouldn't, or shouldn't the mini give the three beeps for any bad memory installed on its boot startup check???

But definitely worth trying regardless. Personally, I often wonder how the Mac and do a full, thorough RAM check so fast on a bootup.



- Patrick
======

 

[krs]

It sounds like your Mini may have a bad logic board. You've swapped out the hard drive, tried to boot from a USB installer, and also tried safe mode. None of which works.
One last thing to try - swap out the memory modules with known good ones. Let us know.

Considering the last post by the OP:

it now brings up the apple logo and will load the status bar just under halfway and then shuts off

...is it really a possibility that the problem is a bad logic board?
What hardware on the logic board would be loaded from the OS that far through the boot cycle?

I don't know enough about the nitty, gritty details of the Mac boot process, but with the boot process shutting off just under half way on the process bar, that should give someone knowledgeable an idea what the problem might be.

 

[rachalmers]

Wouldn't, or shouldn't the mini give the three beeps for any bad memory installed on its boot startup check???

But definitely worth trying regardless. Personally, I often wonder how the Mac and do a full, thorough RAM check so fast on a bootup.



- Patrick
======

Bad HDD


Sent from my iPad using Mac-Forums

 

[krs]

Bad HDD

Possible - but the hard drive was already replaced once.

I would try installing or booting from an older macOS than High Sierra.
There was a discussion about problems installing HS a while back - workarounds to make an HS USB installer didn't work, there were Apple support notes that one needs to be connected to the net to complete an HS installation - a lot of possibilities that installing HS from scratch is not as straight forward as older macOSs.

 

[rachalmers]

Possible - but the hard drive was already replaced once.

I would try installing or booting from an older macOS than High Sierra.
There was a discussion about problems installing HS a while back - workarounds to make an HS USB installer didn't work, there were Apple support notes that one needs to be connected to the net to complete an HS installation - a lot of possibilities that installing HS from scratch is not as straight forward as older macOSs.

Ok. But as said earlier. The Mac is looking for an internal hdd that is a bootable drive and known to work, if nothing else, so it can find the master boot-record, and if the installed hdd is not a clone of a working bootable drive, it will never work, because it can’t... boot.
And because it has no MBR it can’t even do the “which drive should I boot from” sequence.
Yes, you may have replaced the internal drive. But did you replace it with a known to be working hdd. Or SSD even.

So you won’t even get it to boot from a usb, unless you can first have a drive in place that can even get to the MBR. Macs have no BIOS system like Microsoft boxes, so you can’t even set it up in the BIOS.
and finally,as I recall from previous posts, it won’t boot even to the first stage on the old drive, which is probably a toasted original hdd.
If you cloned that hdd all you did was clone the failed hdd.

However, I could be completely wrong. Probably am ... so let’s keep looking.




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[krs]

Ok. But as said earlier. The Mac is looking for an internal hdd that is a bootable drive and known to work, if nothing else, so it can find the master boot-record, and if the installed hdd is not a clone of a working bootable drive, it will never work, because it can’t... boot.

If the internal drive was not a bootable drive, the Mac would display a flashing question mark.

That is not the case here - the latest comment I read was that the Mac starts to boot up but quits about half way through.
That is a common symptom some people reported when trying to boot up on HS either from a USB installer that was not created properly or without an internet connection.

 

[rfomlover]

Do these Mac mini's have the same SATA/Power cable as the same year 13" (and possibly 15" and 17") MacBook Pros? Back when I had my Mid-2012 MacBook Pro, I remember people saying to swap out the SATA cable with a known good one (or a new one, which is presumed to be good) and see if that fixes it. Not sure if it will do anything/apply here but just wanted to give my 0.02.