[gmini]

Hi, first post but long time user of these forums. Helped me solve a million issues with my mini.
But I can't seem to find what I need for this problem I'm having at the moment. Not sure if I should put this in the OSX forum, but I'm thinking it may be hardware.

I'm running OSX (10.6.4) and made a clone of my mini using CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner). It was taking ages so I left it to run over night. Woke up in the morning and it completed successfully and all looked good, CCC said it took about 4 hours to complete. Shut down and went to work. Came back and tried to use the mini again. It booted up fine but after about 30 seconds, it just freezes and the the little timer/loading (spinning colorful wheel) comes up and I can't do anything. Tried many restarts and every time it boots OK (maybe a little slower than it used to) and I can use it for about 30 secs and it freezes again.

I tried to boot up in safe mode, but the progress bar freezes after going less than a 1/4 of the way. After trying to boot in safe mode a couple of time, one time it didn't freeze, but at the same point it froze at, the progress bar just disappears and then the mini shuts itself down.

I'm able to boot to the command line no problem and play around at the prompt, but have no idea about using the prompt apart from changing directories and using help

Can anyone give any advice on what the issue could be?

Thanks.