I can not boot into safe mode at all. I can not find any start up drive, when I plug in my external drive, and click, it goes right to disk utility. I get the flashing question mark. I took out the ram (2 8gb sticks) rearranged/reseated them. Could it really be that the 2 sticks of ram suddenly went bad? Or is this actually a hard drive issue? Thank you
iWeb '08, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
A RAM issue will yield beep sounds the second you try to power it on. A folder with a question mark indicates a hard drive issue. Either something is going on with the hard drive itself, the hard drive cable, which your Mac Mini doesn't have so you can rule that out, or no operating system. If it can boot into recovery mode by holding Cmd + R at startup, try reinstalling the OS. If that doesn't work, it is most likely a hard drive issue.
Plus, I don't believe Disk Utility will show issues with the RAM. I believe all it manages is the hard drive itself.
Best of luck!
Disk Utility is giving me an error message 4MEM/61/40000000 0X7C1E5990, which when I researched I thought meant bad ram. It would never boot into safe mode, not once. It also will not load from my external drive. That's why I thought maybe it was the ram, and not a falling hard drive. I took out the 2 sticks of ram and tried each separately, switching slots etc.
pmd892 wrote:
Disk Utility is giving me an error message 4MEM/61/40000000 0X7C1E5990
As CrashBurner says, I've never seen Disk Utility report a memory error. That is a memory error message but it looks like it came from Apple Hardware Test. Did you run AHT, or System Diagnostics?
OK. That makes sense now. AHT is pretty good at identifying problems. If it's third party RAM, I contact the manufacturer or if it is from Apple I'd make a Genius Bar appointment for a free evaluation. Apple has much more comprehensive tests they can run.
What reported it was RAM and did you try the modules one at a time?
Ok thank you very much. I will try reinstalling the OS. If it was actually a ram issue, I was wanting to avoid doing that. I understand its unlikely to be the ram. Should I erase, then reinstall? TY
Apple hardware test
It's been in there for a long time, many years. So you think it could just be a ram issue? Closest Apple Store is quite a long drive for me. Maybe I should try some ram?
Ok thank you. Do you think it could be a ram issue?
Mac mini won't boot. Disk utility shows ram issue.
