Mac mini not booting, no safe mode, no recovery, no target-disk-mode, etc.

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Level 1

4 points

Mac mini not booting, no safe mode, no recovery, no target-disk-mode, etc.

My Mac mini (mid 2011) is not booting. When I try to start, the power light turns on for about a second en I hear the disk spinning up for 5 to 10 seconds. Then it spins down again. There's no apple logo, no startup-chime-sound. It doesn't even gets far enough in it's boot-cycle to start up in safe-mode, recovery-mode, target-disk-mode or try to reset PRAM/NVRAM or SMC. (using a wired keyboard)

The last time I was able to get into recovery-mode by luck, I ran the extended hardware check. But no errors were found.

When taking the harddrive out and connecting it to my MacBook with a SATA-dock, I have no problem using the disc. Running some checks seem to point out that there is no hardware problem with the disk.

I also swapt out the RAM. No change.

Any ideas what could cause this problem and how to (try) fix it?

Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

Mac mini, macOS 10.13

Posted on Oct 23, 2021 3:29 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

den.thed

Level 10

82,570 points

Oct 23, 2021 6:52 AM in response to Paul Heuts

Re-check the Power Supply and Hard Drive connections to the Logic Board.

Try starting up from a High Sierra or earlier USB external Hard Drive.

Not just any RAM modules will work. Try testing the original modules one at a time.

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Answer 2

Paul Heuts Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 26, 2021 12:02 PM in response to den.thed

Hi den.thed, thank you for your suggestions. But unfortunately no luck.

I took apart the whole thing (again), checked all connections, etc. Also swapped out ram modules; original (2x2GB) and upgrade (2x8GB Corsair Apple compatible) in both dual as single configuration.

I even swapped the hard drive, but everything stays the same. In about one out of twenty time I'm able to get into recovery mode or something and boot the machine. But in most occasions the machine is simply not able to start it OS boot. And even when I'm able to fully boot up the system, it randomly crashes after some time (no video output, power led on, system fan at maximum speed).

It seems to me that this is a way more low level problem. Any other ideas?

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Answer 3

den.thed

Level 10

82,570 points

Oct 26, 2021 12:45 PM in response to Paul Heuts

I had to redo the thermal paste on a 2011 Mac Mini that was given to me with some of the same issues. It didn't have startup issues, but it had CPU and GPU overheating issue because the Heatsink was warped. It is working as a Media server these days, but to be honest if it starts having any issues again I will just recycle it.

Sadly in your case, it is starting to sound like a logic board issue and not worth putting any more money or effort into.

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Answer 4

Paul Heuts Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 27, 2021 11:30 AM in response to den.thed

When taking the whole thing apart I didn't find any obvious hardware defects. Certainly no warping. I'm guessing too it's more of a motherboard/logicboard kind of problem. Probably a good reason to trash it and go for some cloud storage and streaming services. Thanks anyways!

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Mac mini not booting, no safe mode, no recovery, no target-disk-mode, etc.

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