2010 Mac Mini freezing on USB activity
Ten days I took it to an Apple dealer who ran the extended Mac Mini test suite without any hiccups. Returned from dealer and the Mini still froze, usually (always?) with USB activity.
Dealer replaced the HD and I retrieved the Time Machine backup, giving it back to the owner on Oct. 23.
No freezing for the first four days, but on Wednesday I got this message from the owner:
"Unfortunately I have to report that my computer froze on me again a few
minutes ago. I was opening (or trying to open) a Word document while the
backup was going on ... Maybe that's the problem?
I saw white streaks on the screen, and then the **** thing froze ..."
This morning (Friday) he tells me that the memory stick he also uses as a backup and to move files to an old iBook has been corrupted by the Mac mini: not readable by an original mac mini, the iBook or the new Mac Mini.
As it's a 120-mile round-trip for me, some suggestions as to where I should go from here would be welcome. One thing I am doing is taking a FireWire cable with me to connect the external Time Machine drive to see whether it really is a USB problem.
2010 MacMini, Mac OS X (10.6.4), 2gb of RAM, using HDMI to HDMI-equipped monitor