Power outage during recovery; lost keyboard

Tech Support
1

I have two relatively easy problems which have joined forces to frustrate me.

  1. I was halfway through the process of migrating my wife’s data onto a new-to-her Mac mini from a time machine backup when our neighborhood lost power. It is now showing the prohibitory symbol on startup.

  2. I had paired her old magic keyboard from the old iMac to the mini, but when the power came back on, the iMac started automatically and paired itself with the keyboard automatically, so now the mini does not have a paired keyboard from which I can enter recovery mode to begin recovery again.

Please tell me there’s a way to do this without having to track down a wired keyboard.

2

When you say “old” do you mean “AA batteries” or “previously owned”? If it charges via lightning, you can plug it into the Mac mini via a lightning cable and use it as a wired keyboard.

3

Gen 1, 2x AA. We’re moving from a late-2012.

4

Disconnect the keyboard from the iMac in Bluetooth settings. Turn the iMac off. Turn the mini on and it should look for the keyboard or ask to pair to it. This is one of the reasons I keep a wired mouse and keyboard handy.