We own a very old model macbook and the startup screen appears as grey and an icon appears in the shape of a file with a question mark in the middle and the startup does not proceed from there.
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MacBook
Have tried different things that have been suggested....reboot PRAM holding down option command P R etc but nothing yet has worked. Don't have installation disk as MacBook is 9 years old so must've thrown disk out years ago.
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MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.4)
IMac Froze and now just File icon appearing on Startup and now using a back-up hard drive to restore Lion but when it searches for disks to install the restore on it can't locate the desktop hard drive.
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iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3), 4 iPods
We are getting a white screen with flashing file icon with question mark inside the file.
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iMac
I have read most things to do with the grey screen and the screen with the question mark, and it's obvious I have to put some sort of disks in, but there is already a disk stuck in the drive?
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iMac
I have a MacBook Model # A1181, I'm getting a grey screen with a flashing question mark inside a folder and the drive doesn't work ither....
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SAFARI download, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
Just turned on my MacBook and it opened up with a grey screen with a folder in the middle with a question mark
Info:MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
I am getting a grey screen with a folder and question mark. i have tried all the methods suggested in apple online support except the OS CD. I dont have the CD and i dont know the version on OS which is on my mac book. I had bought it in 2007-08.
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MacBook
My computer started getting really slow all of the time and then it froze with the spinning rainbow. Normally if I simply press and hold the power button to restart it, the computer is fine. This time when I turned t back of I got a grey screen with the flashing question mark.
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MacBook
My MacBook has just a whitegrey screen with a blinking "?".
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Aperture 3, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4)
My computer froze on me and the rainbow cursor appeared. I forced my Macbook Pro to shut down and when I restarted it, a grey screen appeared with a flashing folder that has a question mark inside.
I tried the following:
1) restarting it holding down the "shift" button and nothing changed
2) restarting while holding down opting+command+p+r until I hear it ding 3-6 times - nothing changed
AND what causes this? This is not the first time I have heard of a Macbook Pro doing this...
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MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion
This has been going on for a while. It happened first a month or so ago.
I turn on my 2008 iMac 24". The screen turns white like always, but no Apple icon appears. It starts to make a loud nice again and again. Bip, Bip. Pause. Bip, Bip, Pause. Bip, Bip. Pause.
I turn it off. Turn it on again. Same thing happens. Repeat.
I take out the cable powering the computer and go to school. I put it back in when i returned and turned the computer on. It worked fine.
Nothing happened again until a week after. I was sitting working on the computer, when it out of nowhere shows the "grey screen of death". I turn off the computer, take out the cable, leave it out for half and hour or so, then turn the computer on. It works fine. Works for a week. Same thing happens again.
Now it starting to appear more often tht though, and I'm afraid to turn it on until i get an external HD so i can Time Machine, in case it will appear more often for every time i turn it on.
The guarantee is not valid anymore (never purchased AppleCare) and i can't bring it to a store and show them what it does, because it doesn't always happen.
I read that it might a kernel panic somethingsomething, and that i need to wipe the HD. Though that was when the computer had the grey screen all the time. Not just occasionally like on mine.
Sometimes, when I turn on my iMac (10.6.2), the system will not load, you can see the grey screen but empty, no apple logo there. I have to force a shutdown pressing the power button and when I turn it on for the second time it will work properly.
It only happens once in a while but I cannot understand why, since nothing changes.
PS.- I have verified my disk with the disk utility and everything seems fine.
When I start up theres a ? Mark on screen
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MacBook, iOS 6.1.3
I sure hope your day is faring better than mine...To try and make my new issue easier to follow and to save face as I feel like an idiot, permit me to explain in bullet format:
First things first: I was running 10.6.8 SL on my 2006/7 model MacBook pro 15.4 w 2 gig sdram, right now I'm running nothing. When I turn on Mac it goes to grey screen and I see a folder/?/apple symbols rapidly interchanging on screen. This occurred after trying to use TM for my first time as I deleted some items I shouldn't have. In time machine all seemed kosher until the first attempt said not enough space on hd so I decided to only click on sys folder in TM. this was where prefs and files were accidentally deleted from after all. The kicker is my Mac still functioned I just noticed my HD no longer had a name, and a few other issues were happening, but I could access and open files, go online, etc... Post time machine none of that was possible! I tried first putting SL disk in but wouldn't read it, so tried restarting w disk in drive. HUGE ERROR on my part. This is where the grey screen desc above took its place. I looked on iPhone and have followed all available suggestions but have come to realize at some point I must have in error created a firmware Pw. I tried entering it but the lock simply stays put (when I attempted one of many fixes to my problem listed online). So now I'm left not knowing if whatever happened messed w my firmware pw or if I somehow chose something diff as pw but I highly doubt that. In any case, I have all of my life locked into a useless box now and I had thought this is why I bought external and used time machine. I've come to loathe TM. it's not as simple as I had thought otherwise none of this dshould have occurred. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I reset or altogether delete firmware pw, and best way to reinstall.
Info:MacBookPro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
My Snow leopard machine hangs during startup at the screen with the Grey Apple logo. It appears there is a SW issue with my OS X boot partition. Here are facts I have learned:The computer boots fine if I hold option at startup and select my boot camp partitionThe compute boots fine if I attach an external HD with OS X 10.6Running a disk repair from the external HD, I see the following two issues that are repaired. Also, note the last line about boot partitionsAfter this disk repair, the disk will still not boot, it hangs at the Grey Apple logo.Booting in safe mode does not resolve the issue, the machine will still not boot to a desktopBooting in Verbose mode, drivers initialize with the last succesful line being the ethernet drives (I believe) and then the hangup occurs. It is unclear what state the boot process is at on the hangup.
This situation has happen twice in the past few weeks. The first time I did a reinstall of OS X to resolve the issue. Then, the issue appeared again approximately two weeks later. I'm hoping to avoid a second reinstall (And really, avoid this issue in the future). It seems perhaps something in the boot partition table or the OS partition, although disk utility says the partition is fine. I have downloaded Test Disk 6.13 to look at the partition table, but I don't know how to interpret the outputs of that program.
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MacBook Pro (15-inch Core 2 Duo), Mac OS X (10.6.3), 2 GB RAM, Boot Camp, Ex HD avail
I recently upgraded to Lion on my MacBook Pro but it didn't sit well with my compuer. It became sluggish and would take forever to load applications, pictures, music, movies, etc that only took SL a few seconds at most. I decided to downgrade back to SL so I put in my Install DVD (version 10.6.6) and tried to format the hard drive so I could start new. However it would not work with the CD, so I continued looking around online and I came under the impression that if you erase the hard drive it will allow you to start new (in my case, with SL). However now I get a gray screen with a folder with a question mark.
I do not have my files backed up through Time Machine.
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MacBook Pro
I've tried turning it ff and on via the power button several times, but it always goes back to the white screen.
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MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2010)
The other day my 1st gen MBP functioned without any probs, until it suddenly powered down. After I removed the question marks from my eyes, I offcourse tried to reboot it.
But it never makes it beyond the grey screen, sometimes untill the apple logo, sometimes not even that far.
Offcours I googled around first to gather some info before I decided to put this problem down on this board. I found this could be a HDD failure, but in those cases, with other people, it could be powered holding apple + s, and doing some checks that way.
Mine doesn't even come that far
I have a second hand 1st gen MBP with upgraded HDD and RAM, snow leopard, and coincidently since last week no more battery... so i may have powered down a completely unprepared mac by tripping over the wire, once or twice...
recently a friend of mine offered to update my 2009 MacBook to Mac osx Lion. when I received the computer back from him, it required a rather large update that has put my MacBook in a terrible state.
upon rebooting from the update, it froze at the grey Apple loading screen, and of course I thought nothing of it and gave it a little restart. Since then I cannot get it past the grey screen or the login window. it seems as though I cannot type in my password or click 'sleep' or any option the window gives me. I've been working on this issue all day, and I've tried countless things from the apple support community, with no avail.
I've tried clearing the cache, I've tried safe mode, I've tried the command+option+control+enter trick on the login page, I'm even trying to boot from the install disc my friend gave me...and it's just refusing to move past the grey screen.
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MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
My macbook pro doesn't boot beyond the grey screen with apple icon and spinning wheel. I used the "Option" button to access the Disk Utility function and run Repair Disk and Repair Disk Permissions. Should I restart my computer?
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MacBook Pro, iOS 5.1
I have a MacBook Pro from 2010 I believe with iOS Maverick installed. (MacKeeper is also on there, which I just found out is apparently malware)
So three days ago I was watching Netflix, the image froze, but the audio kept going. Figured my internet was slow, so I waited a little, nothing happened. pressed escape to leave the full screen mode, but nothing happened. None of the keys would do anything, not even the sound or brightness keys. So I did a force shut down by holding down the power button.
I waited a little, then decided to turn it back on. Start up sound played, white screen with grey apple logo and loading gear appeared together with a grey loading bar. I figured that this meant it had to repair something. But after about a minute or two it just went to a black screen/ shut down. I left it off for a day, tried it again, same thing. Next day I tried booting it up while holding the shift key to do the safe boot (I knew it wouldn't work since I already had the grey loading bar anyways), same thing happened.
Can a bad video card make a Mac Pro stall out at the grey screen, spinning ball, but yet able to boot in safe mode?
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Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
i just updated efi firmware on my macbook pro (late 2011).. and my mbp always starts with a grey screen (not white screen anymore) and the apple logo with a status wheel evertime i turn it on.
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MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I recently took my macbook in to an Apple Store and was told my hard drive may be gone. Before I took it in it was working fine except for the Mail, I was unable to send mail. Now when I try and turn computer on an alternating folder with a ? mark keeps on toggling off and on on screen.
Macbook 2.1
I am having trouble with my macbook: It wont load past the Grey apple start up screen with the spining gears, iv done Zapp on the PRAM, iv run ""/sbin/fsck -fy"". And I am now starting in Verbose mode, but its taking AGES, it must be loading for an hour now, its showing "Neb-computer /System/library/coreservices/loginwindow.app/contenst/MacOS/loginwindow: Login window Application started (Over and over and over again). I don't have an install disk.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have a mid-2007 model and I replaced the x2 stock 1GB sticks with x2 2GB sticks. I followed the correct procedures, (I think), and when I powered it on the fan came back on but the screen was black. I unplugged the unit and replaced put the old RAM back in and now when I power it up the screen just goes grey and beeps when I turn it on.
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Mac OS X (10.6.8)
My screen has gone to a very dark grey on startup. I can faintly make out the desktop icons, but it is about 98% black. Everything else seems to be fuctioning. iMac G417" Flat Panel 17" [Pixar-lamp style] OS 10.4
View 4 Replies View RelatedI just installed OS X 10.6 and now when i try to turn on my computer, i get this grey screen with computer code on it and the black box that says to restart my computer. I tried safe boot along with all the other steps on the page for the grey screen but nothing works.
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iMac, Mac OS X (10.6)
my problem: IBook G4 that recently on reboot is just sitting on the grey screen with the spinning icon as seen here:
what i have done: basically followed apple's tips here
1- booted into safe mode; no change
2- booted into safe mode with shift-command-v to watch the boot; and it just loops around and around; no change
3- reset the nvram/pram; no change
4- booted into single-user mode; ran "fsck -fy" and returned with no errors and "...OK" and rebooted; no change
5- would move on to using my boot disc, however, here is the difficulty- my cd player gave out a bit ago and never replaced it.
so any suggestions? put in a new cd drive? would it recognize it? bring it into the store? i have searched around and haven't seen what to do in my kind of case.
