mac mini wont boot

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reven

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#79645 20-Mar-2011 17:40

hi guys,

i have a mac mini that was in the middle of partitioning for boot camp, said files in use blah blah blah, so went to boot into safe mode to try again. but when i rebooted i got the message

"No Bootable Device -- Insert boot disk and press any key"

now, i cant get past this message.

there is a black cd stuck in the dvd drive as well, and i cant eject this.

ive tried
- holding down eject while booting to eject the cd
- taking the cover off the mini to see if i could manually do it.
- holding down option to bring up the boot menu

nothing is working. ive read that if i have the os x disc in the drive it may fix things, but the blank cd is currently stuck in the drive.

this is has put me into a fierce rage and im currently wanting to kill whoever thought it was a good idea to have no manual way of ejecting a disc from a mini...

any ideas about what i could do? anyone know a place i can take this POS to and have it repaired/reformatted on the cheap?

RunningMan

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#450082 20-Mar-2011 18:13

Try rebooting, and holding down the mouse button (would have to be a USB mouse, direct connected).

reven

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#450084 20-Mar-2011 18:27

thanks for that rebooting with mouse button pushed go the disc out.

now it has the os x disc in the drive. but cant get a boot menu (option key menu) and when it boots, it just shows the message

"No Bootable Device -- Insert boot disk and press any key"

i think when the partitioning was taking place it must have stuffed the filesystem up, is there a way to force a complete clean install of everything?

reven

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#450087 20-Mar-2011 18:41

ok, managed to get the boot menu to show up, put the keyboard in the first usb slot, put mouse into keyboard to make sure keyboard worked (just bought the keyboard a few hours ago, to try eject the disc after my windows keyboards werent working).

im a mac fanboy, but right now i really hate them....

thanks again for the mouse button trick :)

RunningMan

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#450088 20-Mar-2011 19:00

reven:

thanks again for the mouse button trick :)

No worries, the mouse button one is a hangover from years and years ago, when they had floppies as well!

Try putting the OS X DVD in, rebooting, and holding down the "C" key - this forces it to look at the CD (well, DVD) drive for a boot volume. You should be right from there...

reven

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#450091 20-Mar-2011 19:11

RunningMan:
reven:

thanks again for the mouse button trick :)

No worries, the mouse button one is a hangover from years and years ago, when they had floppies as well!

Try putting the OS X DVD in, rebooting, and holding down the "C" key - this forces it to look at the CD (well, DVD) drive for a boot volume. You should be right from there...

thanks, currently reinstalling os x now, so hopefully all will work.