I have an ibook that boots up first to the flashing folder with the question mark then quickly loads to apple screen , then into the os x. This just started happening but I've never seen it before is this a bad sign?
View 6 RepliesMy iBook G4 will not boot even from DVD.Boot with option does not show the hard drive, but shows the Tiger dvd.Memory access error shows at open boot.How can I get this thing to boot?
View 11 Replies View RelatedI have an iBook G3 Clamshell 466MHz with 192mb RAM and 10GB HD. I recently updated the OS from 9.2.2 to Panther on a single partition. The upgrade went flawlessly.Then I purchased a 512mb RAM module from a 3rd Party Vendor and after fitting it discovered the iBook no longer boots past the flashing folder/?.
I removed the new ram and replaced the 128mb module but haven't been able to boot past this flashing folder/? icon. I've zapped the PRAM, reset Open Firmware, disconnected the Keyboard then booted, reset the PMU (need to do this each boot or I see black screen only) and tried to boot from the Panther Disc #1 holding the 'C' key. I also tried TDM with my Intel Mac Core 2 Duo but couldn't boot past the flashing folder/? icon.
My beloved iBook 1.33 wont boot, has flashing? and freezes when I try to boot from original CD with a bunch of vertical lines. I ran the diagnostic DVD and it says Invalid memory access. I removed the external ram chip for computer and still get same error. I also zapped PRAM, reset NMVU (whatever it's called). I already have the iBooks case open and willing to try anything.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI have recently come across an extremely cheap ibook (free) which i was able to keep if I got it too work. Well I've been successfully fairly by using it for a few weeks, then it just died. Not sure how it did but it did. The problems seem to be with the flashing (Finder/?) folder on a gray screen back ground. I've already run through the [URL] tutorials of what's wrong and have successfully done a PRAM and a PMU reset with no result. One of the times that I restarted the iBook and after the flashing folder got two new separate folders. One with an arrow turning clockwise on the left, and another folder with an arrow pointing right on the right. Both in blue folders as the flashing folders. Now I believe the problem is that the iBook is unable to find and utilize the Startup Disk. Forums I have read state to put in the reinstall disc, which I don't see how that will work on account of the CD tray not responding to anything I've yet put in there. Not trying with disc until i know that is the only possible solution. Don't want to loose my disc. Maybe some of you have come across this situation and know of a sure fire way to fix it. If not, Ill have to just send it in to some site.
View 7 Replies View RelatedI have a flashing file folder wheni boot up my MacBook pro
View 1 Replies View Relatedi just upgraded my ibook g3 hd to 20gb. i put in my tiger install disc 1 and i let it go while i was out of the room. i heard the startup chime from another room, later i went to see it with a blue screen and mouse cursor. it wouldn't do anything. then i restarted it with the install disc again, holding C down, and it booted to a grey screen which after about a minute went to the flashing folder with the ? mark.
View 4 Replies View RelatedMy macbook won't boot. A folder with a questionmark keeps flashing...What do I do, so I don't lose my documents?If I send it to reperation, will they see the last thing I did on it? Cause it was quite private...
Info:
MacBook Pro, MacOS X (10.5)
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.
Info:
iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.4)
I woke up to my MacBook fan going nuts. Had an error message on the screen that said something about a disk error. The machine wouldn't do anything (force quit, launch app) so I hard powered down. Now.....NOTHING. All I get is the white screen, followed by the flashing folder. Here is what I have tried so far.
I already booted from the restore cd that came with it and opened disk utility. The hard drive shows up as something like disk1 but not "Macintosh HD."Tried to repair permissions and got an error message. Thought then to do an archive and install......and the HDD isn't even a viable option to install the OS on.
I had the original (but smaller) HDD that came with my MacBook, so I put it back in and everything booted up just fine and is back up and running. (Thank God for MobleMe that had all my contacts, etc on it). But I still have some info on that other HDD that I need. I ordered a usb enclosure for the drive to maybe try some recovery, but it seems to me that the HDD failed or something. Is there anything else I can do?
My imac from 2009 won't boot up. It just keeps flashing a grey file folder with a question mark. Of course now I do not know where my start up cd is.....is there anything that I can do???
Info:
iMac
I bought it refurbished almost two years ago. For several months it has been occasionally showing the flashing question mark on start up. Usually I will restart it in safeboot and then restart and it's fine. This has gone on for a while. I wasn't sure what that was about and have not been successful in finding information about if that was common and what to do about it. (I have two babies so not a lot of time to spend searching for answers when things aren't dire) It usually seemed that if a disc was left in the notebook and/or the top shut without being properly shutdown before hand, this would happen.
Well just a bit ago it was froze on a spinning wheel and I force quit the program it was stuck on and not long after shut it down. Now it won't get past the flashing question mark. I thought it was a startup issue. Now I'm worried it might be a hard-drive issue. My second child's birth video is on there! I know, I should have backed up. I tried Shift on start up and that didn't work. I tried Command+V on start up and that did nothing. I don't have another Mac to hook it up to, just my old trusty PC
My main concern is the files like photos, music, and videos on the hard drive. My husband is not working at the moment so we can't spend a lot of money on it and the nearest Mac Genius bar is over an hour away. Looking for some good advice!
Well, a friend of mine spilled wine on my ibook g4. Other than trying to decide how much if not all of it to ask her to pay(my wine, but on an armrest and I was in the other room), I was wondering if anyone can fix suggestions. We got the battery out and it unplugged right away, but when I turn it on the screen violently flashes on and off. It does seem to run fine other than that, though.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI have a G3 iBook and just the other day the display stopped working. There were no signs of the display going bad, it's just went. Am I able to boot the iBook via Target Disk Mode on my PowerBook and run the iBook Hardware Test CD on it? Also, can I reboot my PowerBook and choose the iBook as the startup volume?
I know how to do Target Disk Mode but the latter I'm not sure about.
I have tried to repair the disk using disk utility but I am getting Filesystem verify or repair failed message. When trying to reinstall OS X, my hard drive never shows up. I cannot boot in safe mode.
This all happened after I came back from a week vacation. I shut the computer down before I left and when I came back, I got the flashing folder with the ? mark in it.
i have recently bought a macbook white late 2009 from amazon,the macbook came without a hardrive and when i bought one all that came up is a flashing folder with a '?' following the guides online i bought a mac osx snow leopard disc to try and fix the problem but when i insert the disk on a reboot it just ejects, iv tried holding c on the reeboot but it still does the same thing,
Info:
MacBook
I recently purchased a Quicksilver machine from the original buyer. It came equipped with Panther. After getting it online I contracted a virus (should have loaded an antivirus program first). So I did a hard shutdown, since I couldn't close anything. When I restarted I went to options and made a bonehead move in selecting something that doesn't let me restart any farther than a "flashing folder with a Mac icon and question mark on it. How to rectify this?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI am getting the flashing mac folder with the question mark when trying to boot up. It started the reboot after I (unsuccessfully) tried to remove iTunes 8.2 so I could go back to 8.1. I was following some instructions from another site, but interpreted the code to be segmented and not to be entered as one large command. So I entered this into terminal while iTunes was still running. "sudo rm -rf /Applications/iTunes.app /System/Library". I think the system was hanging, so rebooted the computer and that's when this started. I can't enter single user mode, diskwarrior has rebuilt the directory successfully, but no luck. I'm on a 12" Powerbook 1.5GHz with 1.25 GB RAM, Leopard 10.5.7.
View 2 Replies View RelatedBasically, I hadn't used my MBP in a couple of days and it was sitting there in sleep mode and I thought nothing was wrong but I came to use it today and it had frozen so I restarted it only to have a flashing folder with a question mark appear.
I Googled around a bit and I thought that a quick repair disk in Disk Utility would fix it as it has for others but when I tried that I get this error:
Code:
Invalid B-tree node size.
Volume check failed.
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.
This is a mid '09 Macbook Pro (specs in sig) so something going wrong with it was the last thing I expected, especially the hard drive.
Getting flashing folder with ? When booting up
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)
I have a 13" Macbook that I bought when they first came out and upgraded to OSX a couple years ago. It's been running fine until a couple days ago when I turned it on and it was displaying a folder with a flashing question mark. I immediately went online to get suggestions for rememdies, but so far none of them seem to be working. When I insert the installation disc it gets recognized, but pretty much all options for reinstalling are grayed out. I hooked up my external hard drive that has my backups on it, but don't know what to do from there. Like many people, I haven't backed up my files for a few months, and there are docs in there that I'd prefer not to have to lose. I've noted that this seems to be a rather common problem.
View 29 Replies View RelatedSo I went to sleep and my computer was just fine, just sitting there being normal as normal gets. I wake up and the cursor is beachballing, no response from anything, holding power button doesn't do anything, so I unplug it. Now when I turn it on it goes to the gray screen with a folder with a question mark blinking. Google told me that this means it can not find the startup disk, and my hard drive is probably toast. Upon advice of forums I grabbed my snow leopard install disk and am going to attempt a boot from disc after work today. If this does not work is it safe to assume I need to replace the hard drive? Computer is out of apple care so this will be a DIY operation.
Computer: 24" iMac, 2.8GHz core 2 duo, 4gb RAM.
Questions:
- What risks are involved with taking apart the iMac? What tools would I need?
- After I install a new hardrive, is it as simple as simply popping Snow Leopard into the disc drive and going from there?
- While I have it open, does anyone know if this model iMac has room for more RAM?
So for the first time ever I power on my iMac and get a flashing folder indicating the system cannot find the boot disk. I reset it a few times and it eventually boots up. A few days later the same thing happens only this time I can't get it to boot up after many attempts.
I try all the usual suspects, reset PRAM, attempt to select boot device (can't find any) Finally I boot from the install CD and when I get to select a destination volume for the OS there are no volumes to select.
I shut it off for a few days assuming I'd need to take it to an Apple store for some kind of repair or hdd swap. However it just started up tonight when I passed it and decided to hit the power button. Should I do anything to it while I have it running? Would a fresh OS install do anything for me? I have everything backed up with Time Machine.
I recently installed a partition to my mac mini using BootCamp, but leaving the Windows installation til a later date as I'd left the authentication info in the studio! On booting up my mac the next day I'm greeted with a flashing missing OS symbol instead of the apple logo. I've tried resetting the mac or trying to force it to start a network startup up but to no avail.
I attempted to run from the installation disc but it isn't responding to holding don 'c' to run from the disc. However I'm running 10.5, but that was an upgrade from a colleagues disc and the only installation disc I have is 10.4. I can get that disc but may take time! The only interactivity I can get from the keyboard is upon pressing 'option' I'm asked to enter a password, but I don't know what password it's after?
Anyway I got the flashing folder error, booted from the snow leopard install disc and want to get a dmg of my hd so I can recover files if possible. I get Input/output error while trying to create the dmg. I get invalid b tree node size error when verifying and I can't repair it.
Is there another way to backup at this point or salvage files without buying/using other software? I'm at college so resources are limited. I don't have a backup so it's fairly important that I can somehow recover files. Also I've tried resetting PRAM with no luck. Is the drive busted beyond repair or is there something I can do?
I have a 24inch aluminum iMac running the latest versions of Snow leopard. It's a little over 2 years old. I can turn my computer on and all is fine, I can keep it running for hours on end and nothing is a problem. However, the moment I turn it off or perform a restart I get the flashing folder icon? It takes about 2 hours before I can boot the computer up again.
I've tried the following:Resetting PRAM and VRAM
Resetting the start up disk information through system preferences
Pulling an individual RAM module, booting up then trying the same with other RAM module (to check to see whether I have some dodgy RAM)
At first I thought it must be the hard drive, but why can I run my computer with no problems at all. I had it running for 2 days, and not a problem! But, the minute I turn it off, that's it, you can forget booting it up for at least another hour.
New 13" macbook pro. Unibody. This is my friends.
She received it yesterday and after an hour of use she rebooted and got the Flashing Question Mark Folder.
She then turned it over to me. I have tried:
-Resiting PRAM
-Using the OSX Disc Disk Utility (It does not see the hard drive at all)
-Starting into safe mode (failed)
-Booting to firmware (failed) (command option p f)
I think the hard drive has died, but I want to get your input on it.
I got a hand me down iMac with both osx 9 and 10.4.11 on it. Tried to set up airport on it but it shows no airport at all in 10.4.11. So I went to start up disk to see if it was in on the 9 partion and everything I clicked on says missing something or other or not able to find so I thought well I would use disk utility and see what it could do for me it did it's thing and when done showed lots of problems so I clicked repair. When it was done it says everthing was repaired do you want to restart your computer? Clicked yes. Came back with a flashing finder folder with a ? mark! Problem is the computer has no disks that came with it so what if anything can I do? I also have a iPhone and now this is my only computer and I have no way to use iTunes for it.
View 2 Replies View RelatedMy MBP (mid 09) is showing a folder with a flashing question mark. I tried the usual things like PRAM Reset and booting with a external drive. I also changed the hard drive and could use it as a external drive on an other Mac - so this seems to work. Another drive could not be used too. The Apple Hardware Test does not work - my Super-drive is broken.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2), MBP mid 09
I had this previously and did a complete erase and reinstall. This time I have reset my NPRAM and used disc utility, but no issues found. On console I have this message recurring com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.SystemStarter) Failed to count the number of files in "/System/Library/StartupItems": No such file or directory?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
