Mac Mini Lockups
It's been a long time since I tried to troubleshoot one of my Macs... and now I'm rusty.
I have a Intel based mini... for ages it has become 'not responsive' after watching a DVD. (meaning when the credits are rolling and I'm ready to eject it... things seem to have stopped responding... the keyboard, mouse and remote all fail to 'wake it up' from the the DVD application.
I kind of forgot about this problem over time and just stopped using it for DVD playback. On an off when I use it I've found a high amount of 'lockups' where I have to cold reboot it.
I decided to pull it out from behind my TV and make use of it this week... and did an erase and reload of the OS and brought it up to Leopard. I then did all the updates. During the first round of updates... it froze during the first couple minutes. The power button flashed on and of fairly steady. Then the screen blanked. I assumed perhaps the updates took a while and so I gave it an hour or two. Long story short, it never came back. Screen stayed black, and no response from keyboard. Hard power cycle, came back, and life was good. Last patches applied. I did a permission repair also.
Well... I hoped the last of the lock ups was behind me... but this morning when I came down the screen saver was one... but no response from keyboard and mouse.... had to hard power cycle it again....
I've owned a lot of Macs... but I don't have a clue what is wrong or where to begin troubleshooting. I have no funky peripherals... a basic USB keyboard and mouse (both of which are brand new, and been swapped out from the originals... no change.
What kind of things could I do to test this sucker out and help stop this lockups!
I have a Intel based mini... for ages it has become 'not responsive' after watching a DVD. (meaning when the credits are rolling and I'm ready to eject it... things seem to have stopped responding... the keyboard, mouse and remote all fail to 'wake it up' from the the DVD application.
I kind of forgot about this problem over time and just stopped using it for DVD playback. On an off when I use it I've found a high amount of 'lockups' where I have to cold reboot it.
I decided to pull it out from behind my TV and make use of it this week... and did an erase and reload of the OS and brought it up to Leopard. I then did all the updates. During the first round of updates... it froze during the first couple minutes. The power button flashed on and of fairly steady. Then the screen blanked. I assumed perhaps the updates took a while and so I gave it an hour or two. Long story short, it never came back. Screen stayed black, and no response from keyboard. Hard power cycle, came back, and life was good. Last patches applied. I did a permission repair also.
Well... I hoped the last of the lock ups was behind me... but this morning when I came down the screen saver was one... but no response from keyboard and mouse.... had to hard power cycle it again....
I've owned a lot of Macs... but I don't have a clue what is wrong or where to begin troubleshooting. I have no funky peripherals... a basic USB keyboard and mouse (both of which are brand new, and been swapped out from the originals... no change.
What kind of things could I do to test this sucker out and help stop this lockups!
Comments
If you have a current applecare policy, you can download an image of tech tool from the support page and burn it to a cd or load it on a flash drive.