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I have a mac mini 2012 which only boots to completion when in verbose mode. when just normal booted it gives the fan symbol for a few seconds and then loops back around.

I've done a time machine reinstall and also replaced the HDD of the fusion drive and rebuilt it.

So I'm at a loss now as to why this is happening.

Any suggestions appreciated

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  • I don't know why this happens, but it is an interesting case of a Heisenbug. If it happened to me, I would probably set the machine to always boot verbosely and forget about it. I used to have my macs boot verbosely anyway. I think you can set it up with sudo nvram boot-args -v. But apparently, these days you have to be booted into recovery mode for that to work (unless you have a pretty old OS). – Harald Hanche-Olsen Aug 29 '19 at 12:39
  • Interesting I'm on 10.12 ...not too old not to new either....maybe I'll try the verbose mode thing – BostonMacOSX Aug 29 '19 at 12:41
  • The fan is controlled by the SMC. You can reset the SMC by while holding command-shift-option pressing the power button. However, I’ve never heard of the fan symbol... I search the net briefly and didn’t see anything either. Are you sure it’s a fan and not the FireWire symbol? – Theologin Aug 29 '19 at 12:44
  • The fan swirly.....like when you shut down your iPhone... the 12 bars in a circular pattern which rotate/pulse – BostonMacOSX Aug 29 '19 at 12:49
  • 10.12 is new enough to have SIP, and that is (I think) what stops you from doing the nvram command when booted normally – Harald Hanche-Olsen Aug 29 '19 at 12:49

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