Windows Killed my poor Mac Mini
I'm a pretty Mac savvy guy. I've owned both Windows and Mac machines all my life... and I just ran into a problem that has really floored me....
Last night I went to install Windows XP Professional using Boot Camp on my Mac Mini. It seemed like a pretty basic process so I guess I wasn't paying too much attention. I formatted my partition, popped in my XP disc, and got all the way to where the installer restarts the computer.
Then Disaster.
I get the famed error "Disk Error Press any key to restart" after the line asking me to press any key to boot from a disc.
Then nothing.
I read that this happens when your XP disc doesn't give you the option to reformat the partition or something. That's fine. But I had another really serious problem.
Nothing worked. No keys on the keyboard, no startup discs, no nothing. No key combinations will bring up a choice of boot disc, verbose mode, target disk mode, or anything. I have tried booting with an XP and Leopard disc in the actual DVD drive on the Mac Mini and a USB DVD drive. Discs that go in the machine's drive will not come out and the computer has to be cracked open to extract the disc.
With the Leopard disc in the external it spins and thinks for about 15 minutes and then eventually goes to the same "disk error" message.
I can't get it to go back to OSX. I took the drive out and put it in an enclosure and deleted the XP partition. But after painstakingly putting the machine back together, I set it up, turn it back on, and hoped to see that wonderful apple logo!
Nothing. I get the "boot volume can not be found, insert boot CD" or something... So I do so... Nothing. I take it apart, take out the disc, put it in the USB external... it spins for about 10 minutes... then it goes to a blinking cursor ala PC DOS... nothing. I tried resetting the PRAM as per the instructions on the apple site and NOW the fan is blasting, I still got that Boot Volume error, and the light on the front of the computer no longer turns on.
I'm at a loss here, people... I AM the computer guy to other people. I have nobody to turn to.
Please help...
Powermac G5 Quad 2.5, macbook, Mac Mini Core Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.6)