Long story short, there's a bootable DVD in my Mac Mini and the machine just sits on the white screen with the Apple logo. It starts reading the DVD but it stop and does nothing.

Help

Turn the Mac mini off.

Turn it back on, when you hear the start up chime press and hold the mouse button until the disc is ejected.

Thanks MightyAtom. Your trick helped me get the DVD out of my machine which crashed at almost the same instant as Ben's. Still no reboot however.

Thanks a ton. You're a lifesaver.

Now, you wouldnt happen to know why my Mini wouldnt boot the DVD I had in, would you? It sits on the white screen with the Apple logo and does nothing. The drive spins up a bit but does nothing.

Ben™,

When rebooting off the Installer Disc, are you holding down the C key, just before it goes "Boingggg!"?

In order to boot off your Installer Disc, you must first insert the Tiger DVD Installer Disc (naturally). There's no need to change the Startup Disk in System Preferences. Just Restart your Mac with the C key held down until you see both the grey Apple logo and the spinning track wheel animation underneath it.

When you see these two items on your screen, you can then release the C key and it should boot up off the Tiger Installer DVD.

If it doesn't, asks: do your have a wireless keyboard?

cheers,

cw

ClockWork: Nah, I dont hold down C because I put in the disc inside OS X and hit the "Restart" button in the Install app. This has always worked fine in the past.

And nope, I don't have a wireless keyboard. Got a wired Apple Keyboard.

Another thing you can do with the DVD inserted is, boot holding down the Option key. This will bring up a list of bootable disks which you can double-click on one to boot from.

By the way, which Tiger DVD are you booting from? The one that came with the machine?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Currawong @ Aug 16 2006, 08:00 AM) [snapback]205439[/snapback]</div>Retail DVD

its not damaged is it? if it is, it could be getting a bum sector during boot that is causing issues. try making a copy and using that. (you should always use a copy anyway to prevent damage to the legit disc)

otherwise there might be an issue with the DVD drive not reading data properly. does disc booting on other machines cause the same problem? might narrow it down to either the disc or the offending machine.

W2ttsy

Disc is in perfect condition. I have a backup disc, but I don't use it.

Suggests you attempt trying to Restart with both the Tiger DVD Installer (or its Backup Disk) - with the C key held down as described above.

The C key down is based on a much older startup command that simply means: Startup from CD, when Apple's Installers were on CD.

Also worth throwing in - as we don't know the full details of your Mac Mini - sometimes the Installation comes on two discs - an Installer 1 and then either an Installer 2 or a Restore Disc. You must use the Installer 1 - the primary Tiger DVD.

Post back what happens if you boot off Tiger DVD with C key down.

cw

Is it an Intel Mini or PPC mini?

PPC - 1.25GHz w/ 1GB RAM.

The reason I asked is, i can't help wondering if your Tiger retail DVD is too old for the machine. A 10.4.0 DVD probably wont boot a recent iMac Mini (nor many other new Macs). If your 10.4 DVD is close to the same age or older than the mini, this might be what the problem is.

It's 10.4.3 - well younger than the machine.