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.
I have tried numerous times to restart my macbook pro to get to the startup manager. And even when holding down the option key, it will just take me back to the flashing file with a question mark in it.
I just replaced my SATA drive. When I went to restart my computer I got a flashing folder with a question mark in it. What is happening and what to do now?
Had to perform disc repair a couple of weeks ago and reinstall to defaults. At that time had spinning wheel when trying to start. Now have flashing folder icon with question mark, and cannot enter utilities or start from recovery USB.
My computer seemed locked up, nothing would open. I had to force quiy everthing. I tried to normally shut it down and it wouldnt shut down. I held the on off power switch. When I tried to turn it back on It stays tuck on the white screen with a flashing folder icon with a question mark in it . Has my hard drive gone bad?
I dropped my MacBook from a fairly low height the other day. Now when it boots up, the Flashing Folder-? Icon pops up. bummer. I've read around and tried everything I can find to try. I've read over posts such as: [URL]. Nothing works. My only problem is that I can't get it to boot the DVD startup disk at all. Everything I try ends with the disk being kicked out of the drive, or spinning for a while and then doing nothing.
So 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?
I have a lamp style iMac and when I boot it up I get the flashing folder from the mac face to the question mark. I booted it up with the OS X DVD, but a padlock comes up. I have never set a password for this computer, except to login, and that password isn't working. Is there a way around this? I've tried everything I can think of.
Ive had my Imac for about 9 months and havnt had any issues with it until the past 2 months. The first issue was that i would leave it running for the day and i would restart and get the flashing folder issue. I would then go through all the appropriate steps- unplugging from the power source for 45 seconds +, try booting it with the OSX cd in, ect. At first these steps worked. The next issue i had was a power outage. I followed the same procedure when i went to start my imac up again (mind you it was within 10-15 minutes of it being turned off) and these steps did nothing and the flashing question marked folder appeared every time. I called Apple support and after 2 hours they insisted that it was a faulty hard drive. I let the imac sit for the rest of the day and before i went to bed i decided to give it one more shot. It booted up just fine.
Ive come to the conclusion that im only getting the boot error when it has been running for long periods of time and that the casing feels hot when i try restart. I was wondering if you guys could let me know if my theory of over heating causing the boot error is correct, and if so is there anything i can do myself to help correct the problem? I really want to avoid going to a mac store because its so far away from my location.
My colleague reported me something a bit strange a creasy. They told me that the icon folder is following the cursor mouse. (It's not a joke) . I just experienced this right now, and I am going to explain step by step, what I did.
I opened Finder
I selected a folder to move it into the Favorite section (in order to access it quickly via the favorite bar)
I placed it between Desktop and Document.
While I move that folder, the folder icon appear close to the mouse cursor. This is normal
BUT when I released my button mouse in order to create the folder favorite, (between Desktop and Documents), the folder icon remind on the cursour mouse, and follow it.
Nothing freeze, I can mouve the mouse but it do not react to a click.
To "remove" the folder icon, I have to relauch the Finder (cmdt+shift+esc), or some time, it desappear after 3-4 minute.
When the icon is remove, the mouse is not working perfectly for a moment.
We have this problem while we mouve a pdf, or a .doc file.
My colleague work on iMac 10.9.4.
This problem happen while we want to create a favoris to a local folder or to a remote folder.
4/6 collabrators have this problem and there are all in the same office.
The particularity, they have all a wireless mouse, but I do not think the mouse devise cause this problem..
How do you change the hard drive icon picture in the top right corner to look like the macbook pro computer? I've seen this on a couple people's desktops and was just wondering how you do it. Also, how do you change the folder icon to something that looks cooler.
Yesterday my G5 (Dual G5 2 Gig, 10.4.1 OS) hung up while running illustrator 7, did an escape quit. Now the computer will not restart - a hard drive icon appeared with a flashing question mark. Ran the apple restore disk and the all hard ware pieces checked out fine. When I tried to reinstall the OS it does not open past the install icon. Startup utility does not find the one and only hard drive.
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,
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?
I 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.
Basically, 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.
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.
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 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.
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?
