Can no longer boot into Snow Leopard on Mac Mini (Late 2010)

Rangdrol

Registered
I started having problems on my Mac Mini when I first got it.

I would get grey screens and blue screens appear when typing for extended periods of time. A reboot would always take care of the problem. Eventually, after 3 times to the Genius Bar, I gave up.

Then I started not being able to read CDs, and then a little over a year after I had purchased the computer, I realized I could not burn DVDs. Since I never burned them before on my own systems, I thought I wasn't doing it right, and two months later, I went back to Genius Bar and they told me (without even looking at it) that the optical drive was dead.

2 weeks ago I started having Time Machine crash issues. Then my Finder.app crashed, deleting or hiding all my Desktop icons. Then I found a fix and pumped it into Terminal:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder & disown

That brought all my icons back up and I rebooted. Since then, I cannot log back onto my computer. WHen I do, it starts up, the grey Apple icon loads, the spinning icon (not the Beachball) and then it switches to a dark blue screen, blinks to black screen, and then to a lighter blue screen. And then it hangs there.

I've tried ALL keyboard combos, and only Single User key allows me to access Terminal.

Does anyone know how I can use my computer again? I CANNOT use my install DVDs (Command C, or Command D keys) because they simply don't work, and get spit back out again.

I also d/c all peripherals, unplugged and replugged every peripheral, waited for days, etc., no go. This computer is just 1.5 years old, so Im disappointed Apple wouldn't repair for me, since I had problems from day one, and the very first Mac Mini I purchased from the GB was a lemon and they told me so the first day I bought it, telling me that it would take longer to install RAM into another, so this must also be a lemon, like the first one?

If anyone has any Unix Commands which would help me reinstall or remount my hard drive, that would be great.

I read that this could be a cache issue, so I tried the safe boot, but no luck:

"A Safe Boot deletes the dynamic loader shared cache at (/var/db/dyld/). A cache with issues may cause a blue screen on startup, particularly after a Software Update. Restarting normally recreates this cache."

Because I had the Finder.app issues, I read that deleting Finder preferences might be an issue, and though I had done that in GUI mode, while my computer was still working, I tried via the tsch shell in Terminal.

" rm /Users/shortname/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist"

I also tried this Command:

" rm /Users/shortname/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

and then finished it off with: "sudo rm -Rf ~/.Trash/*" No luck.

I later realized how dangerous this command is/was, and how I could have deleted "all the contents of my home directory" simply by adding an extra space after the "." and the "T" in trash, so be careful, y'all. In my desire to fix this problem I have been playing in Unix like a French Canadian in poutine. (Yeah, I am French Canadian.)

Finally, I used these commands to further cleanse the Launch Services, but if I wiped them out, and I can't reboot, then that may be the problem, since they cannot be re-created?

rm -i ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist
rm -i ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEvents
rm -i /Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices*

If there are any Terminal/Unix Superusers I would appreciate help.
 
Did you ever reinstall your OS X system?
If your existing optical drive is not working now, either replace that internal drive, or add an external.
Another option to reinstall OS X is to create a partition on another external hard drive, and "Restore" your OS X installer DVD to that hard drive partition. "Restore" is a tab in Disk Utility. You could do that on a different Mac. Then, with your OS X installer on that external hard drive (which could even be an 8 GB USB thumb drive - many places less than $10 now), then you can easily reinstall OS X. If you have never done that (and you have not said so), then that may be all that you need to get your mini working properly again.
 
Then I started not being able to read CDs, and then a little over a year after I had purchased the computer, I realized I could not burn DVDs. Since I never burned them before on my own systems, I thought I wasn't doing it right, and two months later, I went back to Genius Bar and they told me (without even looking at it) that the optical drive was dead.
This is not exactly accurate. You cannot say a Optical Drive (or anything for that matter) is dead if it is never inspected. Also "dead" is not the proper term as the drive itself has power.
Does anyone know how I can use my computer again? I CANNOT use my install DVDs (Command C, or Command D keys) because they simply don't work, and get spit back out again.

Spitting out the Discs is a sign that something is wrong with the drive. This can be anywhere from a faulty Laser mechinism in the drive or even a dirty laser lens. iff you have another HDD or Mac you can copy the Discs using the restore tab and boot off the USB or FW HDD.
 
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