MacBook :: Unresponsive Computer - Gray Screen - Picture With Question Mark
Nov 12, 2009
I got a 3 year old white macbook. I was surfing the net when suddenly it turned off. On restart, I got the grey screen for a while, the a picture of a file with a question mark in it, waited for ten minutes, still the file. I have done the following:
1.- Reset the PRAM: I use the combination of keys, and it reboots, but on rebboting it goes back to the picture of the file.
2.- Use the option key on startup: I get a grey screen with the curso on it, which I can move with my mouse, but no buttons to click or nothing.
3.- Use the X key: as if doing nothing
4.- Resseting the SMC: as if doing nothing
I have an issue with selecting (restart). If i choose restart after a software update, from the apple drop down, or when i select the drive in startup disk in preferences, it will boot into a gray screen with ? mark. if i choose (shut down) from apple drop down menu and then start up from the power button on the air, it boots up with no problem. I have checked with the SSD maker and i have the latest firmware I cannot use the old HD to see if it is a drive issue. Its dead.
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.
I have my mac pro finder screen it has a question mark in the gray bar I can't get rid of it.
I created the problem by downloaded a few hundred screen saver photos. they were a mess.
after weeks of deleting cloning and fixing files. I had everything removed except on the finder bar a little Flag of Israel . I managed to get rid of the little flag but now have a question mark instead. If I click on the mark it says the item can not be found.
I am currently getting a gray screen with a folder and question mark. I have tried resetting the PRAM and when I hold down the option key, no drives show up at all. I also can't boot into OS X in safe mode. I don't hear a clicking noise that you usually get from dead hard drives.
When my wife starts her iMac the screen stays gray and in the center of the screen is a folder with a question mark. I am not sure how to get it running.
How hard is it to replace the hard drive? I have a disaster recovery company step up to get all my info off of it if they can. But I really don't want to spend the money to have someone pull out the HD and put a new one in if I can do it myself. I have experience building pc towers but I haven't ever pulled apart an iMAC. Its an iMac 23(or 24) inch from Dec 2007 (I don't have the model info on hand as the box is in storage).
I just bought a new iMac. I have been trying all week (with no success) to transfer files and apps from my previous iMac. The last time I tried to transfer, I used target mode on the old computer. It looked as if it was finally working, so I left with 2+ hours remaining on the transfer. When I returned, the computer was frozen and nothing would work. So I held the power button to turn it off. When I tried to turn it back on, there was only a gray screen with a flashing folder with a question mark. I feel like I have tried everything listed in other discussions. The only thing I am not able to try is to reinstall Lion because the new computer did NOT come with an OSX disc of any type.
I'm selling my old iMac and while cleaning the hard drive it froze. I forced shut down and when I turned it back on a circle with a diagonal came up initially, followed by flashes of that, a question mark and the apple symbol. Now it won't get past the grey screen and the flashing symbols.
so i go to turn my imac on tonight and it makes the normal noise when it always turns on but the screen stays blank(light blue)....after about 2 minutes this little picture of a folder with a question mark shows up in the middle of the screen. it keeps making this clicking noise as well. ive tried unplugging everything and restarting it here is a pic of what the thing that pop ups looks like [URL]
Allright so my girlfriend accidentally spilled a drink on her macbook the other day. We thought we had cleaned it off and everything was fine. We were mistaken. During normal usage the computer crashed so we restarted it and are now greeted upon startup with a gray screen and a gray application folder with a question mark on it flashing repeatedly. What is the course of action guys? I'm not computer whiz and I'm wondering if we can fix this ourselves without having to take it in for repair. And FYI she does not have apple care
I am trying to fix a friends macbook pro. When I turn it on the screen shows the apple and the spiral underneath it spinning like it should then when it stalls for .2 seconds it goes to a white screen then there is vertical purple lines in groups across the screen. So the screen is white/purple. Then it fades to just white and I cant do anything.
I hooked up my monitor with a DVI cable to see if it was the motherboard that was possibly bad but the monitor works just fine with the cable. I can use the computer with the laptop keyboard/mouse and it works just fine. The laptop screen just stays blank the whole time. I uploaded a vid to utube for it. If anybody has any ideas for me please help. I dont know if this is a monitor problem or the inverter or the motherboard, possibly some other piece of hardware? Here is the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JBFv-GTBmY
im getting a message on a grey screen asking me to restart my computer when i'm trying to start my imac? So, i hold down the on / off button to do a hard restart and i get the same message again.
I have a 20" iMac G5 1.8 GHz which has been pretty reliable since new. A few weeks ago I fitted a new Hard-drive (Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB), other than that the computer is bog standard. For the last few days when I start up, the computer switches itself off straight away and I have to press start again. Sometimes it gets as far as the grey screen and sometimes it gets to a complete desktop screen before this happens. This may happen 2 or 3 times and then the computer works fine all day, I can even restart with no problems once it is running fine. As it stands I can live with the problem but I worry that it may get worse. Anyone know what this might be? Could it be related to the new hard-drive? Could it even be related to the cold weather?
My computer has started randomly popping up a grey screen which tells me to restart. It keeps happening and obviously something is wrong. Not sure if it is a hardware failure but something's broke! Anyone know what the deal is? Here is my latest panic log:
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0: Backtrace: 0x000954F8 0x00095A10 0x00026898 0x000A8204 0x000ABB80 Proceeding back via exception chain: Exception state (sv=0x2D9C6780) PC=0x00306440; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x9C95F6DC; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x003063BC; R1=0x1787B9C0; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 - Data access) Backtrace: 0x003063BC 0x002B7FCC 0x004EE0A8 0x004EDB9C 0x004EDA20 0x00465CCC 0x0049A634 0x0049A338 0x0049B6E0 0x0049BA14 0x002D1B8C 0x002D0A54 0x000A9714 Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies): com.apple.driver.AppleUSBTCKeyboard(1.3.0f1)@0x4ec000 dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOUSBFamily(2.8.1)@0x463000 dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOUSBHIDDriver(2.5.5)@0x4e6000 dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOHIDFamily(1.4.13)@0x4a5000
I have a few month old iMac 27" i7 quad core for music use and did an update this morning which consisted of an itunes update and update to the screen firmware and two other things I can't remember. Do the usual install and restart business and am now met with the following error:
------------------------------------------------------ panic(cpu 0 caller 0x558271): "Unable to find device driver for this platform: "ACPI". "@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1504.3.12...................... Debugger called: <panic> Backtrace (CPU 0) , Frame: Return Address (4 potential args on stack) 7 lines of numbers and letters (please let me know if you need these) BSD process name correspoding to current thread: Unknown Mac OS Version: Not yet set Kernal Version: Darwin Kernel Version 10.3.0...............
While working on the computer, sometimes the screen will turn gray (from top to bottom) and a message will appear saying the computer must be restarted.So far the local Apple store has not been able to find the problem. The last solution the store tried was to replace the Airport Card, but that didn't work. Computer was purchased in December 2011.
After the computer has been in sleep mode for a little while, when i try to wake up the computer, it turns to a cray scree, a loading bar appears and then it takes like 5 mins for the icons to appear and for the mouse to work!
Info: iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), Stock mottle 21.5inch
my dual 2.3 ghz G5 power mac with 3.5 gig memory running 10.4.11 started crashing (grey screen "you must restart your computer...) and soon stopped booting. suspecting the hard drive as it had been noisy for some time I ran "repair disk" in disk utility from my mac book (connected by firewire, G5 booted as target) and it booted again but soon crashed again and after a couple more crashes it would not boot and attempts to repair failed. I installed a brand new hard drive, installed osx 10.5 and updated it to 10.5.8 and it seemed to install and boot fine but while trying to burn a .dmg dvd with toast (10.0.5) I got the grey screen anain and repeated attempts to burn a disc with the same .dmg resulted in a crash every time. it has also crashed while downloading, playing back itunes hd video, and using an "eye tv hybrid" tv tuner as a dvr. below is the most recent crash log - note that most of them have referenced cpu 0 although the most recent it's cpu 1 -THANX & PLEASE HELPInterval Since Last Panic Report: 0 sec Panics Since Last Report: Anonymous 4A58CF1E-844-409F-8BF3-65A3A3CD2E79.......
I've been using Safari 5.1.4 for about six months and haven't had any problems until now. All of a sudden, I can't get Safari to quit. (My other browsers are fine.) When I scroll down under "file" the "quit safari" option is light gray and unresponsive. At first I thought I would uninstall Safari and then reinstall. However, when I tried dragging the icon out of applications, it wouldn't go into trash since it's permanently open. When I try to shut down or log out Safari aborts the operation.
Most of the time when I turn on the Mac I get the white screen and question mark appear. Sometimes it will turn on and work. But often the coloured spinning wheel starts up especially after trying to use iphoto it freezes and a couple of times the screen has then gone black. The computer seemed pretty warm yesterday when this happened.
My Macbook is not even a month old yet and already I'm encountering problems.
1) Safari (7.0.4) won't quit several times and I have to force shut down by pressing the power button for a few seconds.
2) I keep having problems where pictures won't load and instead a blue box with a question mark is there. (on sites like Tumblr and Facebook and others as well) (at first I thought it was the site but the sites open perfectly on other computers).
I'm noticing some weird behavior in my Mac Pro first gen.
Basically, when I start it up, the displays just stays black for some time, until the Desktop loads up and the computer is functional, but never displays the gray screen with the Apple logo. This just happened all of a sudden and stayed like this.
I know is not a big deal now, but I'd like to sell it in the near future and this could be problematic for that.
So I've got a powerbook G4, thats 8 days past its warranty. Conveniently, it now won't turn on. It won't wont boot from CD. If I turn it on, I get a gray screen that usually just turns my computer back off, if thats not the case I get a screen that shows the finder icon and a question mark and then turns off.
All it will do is boot into open firmware mode. Currently the install disc is inside of it and I've tried booting the cd using "cd:, bxi" and "dir hd", and it can't open both. Does anyone know how to wipe the HD, and start the installer using firmware? Otherwise, I think I'll have to take out the harddrive and plug it into an external case and then wipe it.
I think the hard drive in my Macbook (2007 Model) has died. My macbook froze and when I restarted I can hear an usual clicking noise and I only get a white screen with a grey folder icon and white question mark inside. Fortunately, I use super dooper to create a bootable clone of my hard drive as a back up. When I attach this and hold down the apple key I boot straight into the clone and the computer runs fine from the external hard drive. If I go to disk utility my computer can not locate the internal hard drive, nor if I go t sysyem prefs-startup disk. Should I assume its dead or could it be a connection problem. I don't have applecare so I'm willing to buy a new hard drive and swap it myself. However, this is making the assumption the hard drive is the culprit. Can anyone else diagnose this problem from the desrcitpion before I shell out on a new hard drive?
When I go back on the computer in the morning, the computer seems to choke on everything - anything I do gets me a beachball (click OK on the "you have been disconnected from AIM" dialog? Beachball. Trying to open a window in an app? Beachball. Trying to open a menu? Beachball). After a few minutes, the computer just freezes and so can't do anything about it. I had to hard reboot and the same thing happens after the start up. This happened a few times, but today was the worst - the computer just froze. I can move the mouse, but that's it. The GUI is totally unresponsive. I had to hard reboot to get out.
