Chosen Solution

I purchased a 1.66 Core Duo mini early last year, ran sata out the side, and upgraded to a T7200 processor. Over the past month, I got a couple of lockups under load (importing CDs), and once a GSOD. Last week, I woke up to find my mini completely dead. The power light was still on, the hard drive was still spinning, but nothing going on. I powered it off, and back on, and it still sat silent. The light came on, but no chime, and no booting. What I’ve tried so far:

  • resetting the PRAM => fan runs @ max until I turn it off, front light does not come on.
  • resetting the SMC => back to the normal state where the front light comes on, but nothing else.
  • replacing the original 1.66 Core Duo CPU to see if I’d smoked the T7200.
  • pulling one of the 1G chips out, and then the other. At this point, is there much chance that it could be anything but a failed logic board? (The thing was quite dusty around the intake vents …). I suppose it could be the power supply, but it seems sort of unlikely. Nobody seems to sell logic boards, so I guess it’s time to pick up the cheapest old mini I can find ($350 is what I’ve seen), or fork over ~$750 for a brand new one. -//

I’m pretty sure that the main board was dead, so after fiddling with it for a while, I gave up and finally bought myself a new mini. -//

hi peter, since you already took it apart, i think you don’t need the guide you already tried a few things, but i tell you what i would do in that case -s o if there is anything mentioned what you already did - ignore it ;-) does the led flash a few times when you power it on ? try to start from the setup dvd that came with the mini(press c when you switch on the mini)- (btw - what os do you use ?) if it starts from the disk, try the disk utility to check/repair the permissions/harddisk if that wont work - go the hard way remove almost everything whats inside - ram, wifi card, hdd & dvd try to power it on - normally the led should flash 2 times in that case - the mini would recognize that no ram is installed normally there are beep codes - but i had a mini that didn’t make any sound 1 beep = no RAM installed 2 beeps = incompatible RAM types 3 beeps = no good banks 4 beeps = no good boot images in the boot ROM (and/or bad sys config block) 5 beeps = processor is not usable the flashing led is beep code plus 1 (no ram equals 2 flashes) if that works, shut it down and try putting the ram in and start it again - if that also works, you should see a grey screen with a folder/question mark - shut the mini down now connect the hdd and try booting the mini again - if it works - you should be able to start the system now you can try the same thing with the optical drive and the wifi card - if the system stops on any point - you have found the faulty part. you can also change the order or better - if the hdd won’t work, try to go ahead with the optical drive and so on. sometimes is the disconnecting/connecting game the only way to rule something out. but keep in mind - the psu can be faulty i hope that i didn’t forgot anything ;-)

Check the voltage coming out of the power supply first. Maybe you got off easy.

I had a late 2007 Mac mini and took it in to have it looked at by an Apple staffer at a storefront (same situation as described in this post). He didn’t do nearly as much as I had done, and seemed tethered to what he could do on the keyboard, which did nothing. He tried a separate power brick and the behavior was the same as described in this post. It was hot in the room the day it failed (screen went off in the middle of usage). His guess, which was no better than mine, was that the logic board failed. He offered to do more, but I asked him how much the repair would be and he agreed that any way I looked at it, probably $100’s to fix. I parted and three cheery, un-caring sales clerks wished me a good day as I left, looking very sober and disappointed. I’m currently using a $6 SATA enclosure and pulling my data off and onto an NTFS storage drive using some HFS+ capable software from a SourceForge project.

Hello , No Booting Sound and single flash of the power LED then a loud fan sound due to high rotation speed !! . check nothing. Had this problem before and i did fix it by replacing the main board battery. that easy and that simple. Check youtube for how to disassemble.