# Mac Mini won't boot from Snow Leopard CD



## numegil (Nov 19, 2009)

Hi,

A few weeks ago I bought a slightly used Mac Mini on eBay. Everything was going well up until yesterday, when it froze up on me. I didn't think much of it, and tried starting it up again a few hours later, only to be greeted by the flashing question mark of death.

I did some reading online, and know that the flashing question mark basically means that there's either a problem with the OS installation or the hard drive itself. I borrowed a friend's Snow Leopard installation CD (mine didn't come with the CD) to try to boot from it, but it refuses to boot from the CD.

The only keyboard bootup control that does anything so far as I can tell is the alt key (using a windows keyboard), which results a long delay while booting, followed by a blank screen with a mouse cursor. Everything else just ends up with the flashing question mark. If I try to hold C to boot from the CD, it sits there for 3-4 minutes with the occassional CD whirring sound, then ejects the CD and goes to the flashing question mark.

I desperately need this mac to work by next week for a class I'm taking on iPhone app development, so I was gonna try to go the Apple genius bar tomorrow. Unfortunately, its a 4 hour round trip for me via public transport, so I would really appreciate it if someone here could help me out and tell me any possible reasons why I can't seem to boot from the CD.

Thanks a lot!
-Numegil


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

THe Mac Mini has one of two CPUs in it, either a G4 PPC or an Intel. Only the Intel Mini can run Snow Leopard. If you are sure it's an Intel Mini, then what color is the disk? If it is gray, then the disk is made to boot the kind of Mac it came with, not others, and so that is why it may not boot from it.
As for holding the ALT key down durning boot up, that is the correct key to get the boot menu. If the DVD or hard drive do not show up, the Mac can't boot from them. TO know for sure if the hard drive has failed, you do need an installer disk to boot from. If the installer does not see the hard drive, then it is bad, or the hard drive controller is bad, but if it went, then you shouldn't be able to boot from the disk drive either as I believe it is the same controller for both.


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