Mac mini won't shut down - instead it restarts

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Level 1

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Mac mini won't shut down - instead it restarts

Hello everyone,

Since I upgraded to Mountain Lion, my Mac Mini (Mid 2011) won't shut down.

Instead, it restarts and shows a grey screen indicating that a shut down problem occured. Then it loads the OS again, it shows a little dialog box with the same shut-down notice for me to report to Apple. I can use the Mac normally, but whenever I shut it down, this endless loop starts.

My only solution so far is to shut down the machine, wait for the power light to go off and inmediatly unplug the power cord.

Any help will be much appreciated!

Mac mini (Mid 2011), OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Aug 11, 2012 8:55 AM

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Answer 1

mr.k99

Level 3

640 points

Aug 11, 2012 8:57 AM in response to marcelo_pe

To (harshly) shut down your machine, try pressing and holding the power button for 5-10 seconds.

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Answer 2

marcelo_pe Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 11, 2012 9:03 AM in response to mr.k99

Thanks for your response! That will surely help in the meantime.

Although, I still want my Mac to shut down cleanly, so I'll be hearing more comments.

Regards.

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Answer 3

marcelo_pe Author

Level 1

0 points

Aug 11, 2012 9:50 AM in response to marcelo_pe

Ok, I solved it.

I shut down the Mac going to Apple logo > shut down as I normally would. This time I hold the Option key when I clicked the Shut down button on screen.

My Mac mini is not rebooting anymore :) The shut-down was clean and neat.

This is my first Mac ever (I got it 7 months ago), I don't know what the Option key does when it comes to shutting down. I did it because I read somebody did something like that for another unrelated problem on this forum.

It'd be great if somebody with more experience could explain the Option thing. It doesn't make any sense to me yet.

Hope this is helpful for more people!

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Answer 4

esmuziq

Level 1

4 points

Nov 27, 2012 4:49 PM in response to marcelo_pe

i had this and it resulted in a sys fail .

My mac could not boot anymore . It loaded until the gray screen , and the apple logo would have a spinning wheel on the bottom . Under the wheel there is a bar that loads about 10 percent untill it shuts down .

I then have to do a reinstall with my os cd on an other drive ( i guess that must be cause i did not format the original os drive ) The first time i did the upgrade from snow leopard to ml . It worked for about a month and coould never shut down correctly . I would wait for the black screen and do a harsh shutdown with the power button .

Ow yeah my original drive for my os was Macintosh hd as it comes standard . I reinstalled my os on an other drive and every time i boot it says that my Macintosh hd could not be loaded .

Im just gonna stay on Snow Leopard for now cause installing all my applications from zero takes too much energy and time . I really liked ML though , but i can't handle the BS .

funny thing again . On my macbook pro everything works sooo fine .But my mac pro just seems to rejects it in some strange kind of way .

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