IMac (Intel) :: Sometimes Won't Boot - Flashing Question Mark
Sep 3, 2014
I have an aluminium cased iMac (2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) running OS 10.6.8.Â
Recently I have found that sometimes the machine will not boot - I get the normal chime, grey screen and then the flashing question mark icon. I first noticed the problem a few months ago when restarting after a power outage had occured whilst I was using the Mac. After a couple of tries the machine booted and so I thought little more about it because in usual circumstances when the machine was shut down correctly it started as normal and behaved perfectly. However, after another power outage over the weekend the problem has become much worse.Â
I have tried all the usual things like trying to boot up in safe mode and recovery mode but with no success. The only way I can get the Mac to boot at all is to simply keep powering down and powering up again and hoping that it will spring into life. Once it does boot the Mac behaves perfectly.Â
I have an 10.6.8 universal system disk and I got the machine to boot from this disk. I then tried to perform some diagnostics on the hard drive (320Gb) but when I got to the pane that shows the available drivesthere was no drive to be seen.Â
After a lot of tries I have got it to boot off the hard drive since so, I have been able to back up files that weren't archived to an external drive.Â
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Jun 17, 2012
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)
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May 4, 2012
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
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Jun 21, 2014
I get is white screen with flashing question mark. I've inserted OS disc but it won't run.Â
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Dec 10, 2014
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. Â
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11)
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Nov 6, 2009
My iBook G4, 1 GHz, 1.2 G RAM white plastic 2 USB purchased 2004 refuses to boot. When I try to use the startup disc, I get the "You need to restart your computer." message. The HD was replaced 2 years ago after a fatal crash. Has it happened again? That repair at an authorized dealer was so expensive I'll be halfway to a new laptop if I go back. I have been able to get it up 3 times since the problem started, so I suspected kernel panics or RAM problems. But not been able to run disc utilities--it just stares at me. Now can't get it to boot at all.
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Nov 6, 2008
Problem: When I boot up my Macbook, I get the flashing question mark. Failed Solutions: I booted using the Install disk and went to Disk Utility. The hard drive was not mounted.I reset the PRAM. I noticed that the Mac startup sound goes on now, but the same problem (question mark) persists. I went to Disk Utility again. HD still not mounted. I held the option key when booting to go to the Startup Manager. The mouse pointer appears on a grey screen, now, but nothing else What do I do?
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Jun 20, 2012
My 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)
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Nov 15, 2010
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?
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Apr 15, 2012
Getting the Flashing Question Mark Folder on start-up. What to do?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Mar 23, 2012
I sometimes receive a flashing folder with a question mark when I reboot. If I wait a little while and reboot again, my IMac will reboot successfully. My instincts tell me that my hard drive may be failing.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)
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May 16, 2012
I want to do a data recovery of my 15" MBP that has the flashing folder w/ ? mark in it, to an iMac 21.4"; how can i go about that?
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.6)
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Apr 6, 2012
We are getting a white screen with flashing file icon with question mark inside the file.Â
Info:
iMac
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Mar 2, 2012
iMac will not boot from internal hard drive or install DVD. It runs for a bit then displays a grey screen with file folder and a question mark. It will boot happily from a USB connected hard drive.
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)
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Apr 17, 2012
I installed Lion on my Intel iMac (about 3 years old) several months ago and it was working fine. Then yesterday it stopped booting up. It loads a grey screen and then just shows an icon of a folder with a question mark in it. I tried the following:Holding Shift to start safe mode - no response, loaded question mark screenHolding Command Option P R - no response, loaded question mark screenRepair Disk from Disk Utility - says "the volume Bernard 1 appears to be OK"Verify Disk from Disk Utility - no response, loaded question mark screen I created a Lion recovery disk on a USB drive
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Mar 20, 2010
First , scuse typing asrushing this on iPhone!
Got ?folder on boot on late 2007 21"iMac today. Have tried usual stuff including resettng pram and booting from cd. 1st time I booted from install cd it wouldn't even mountthe HD. Turned off and left for a few hours to cool down. Next time ibooted from cd HD mounted and I ran disk utilty repair bit it said there were no problems. Tried to boot from HD no luck.
So, guessing HD is fried:-(
so, before I take it to the apple store to get it replaced (doubt under warranty) or do it myself I want to see if I can recover the mportant data. While I am sure it's all backed up on cradhplan I have 80gb of photos and I'd rather ecover from USB to ext HD instead of over Internet from cradhplan.
So, I'm thnking... When my TM blew up last year I took the HD out and took it to work and slapped it in a drive bay of my mac pro, recovered the data, put it back in the TM before shipping it back to apple for a replacement (that then went on eBay since I got cradhplan)
so; question 1: can I take the HD out of the iMac and have a go installing it in my mac pro? Will an iMac HD fit in the mac pro case/bay?
Question 2: all my photos are also on the apple tv. Can I copy them from the apple tv to another mac if my backup had failed and doesn't restore or I can't recover from iMac HD? I know I had cradhplan set to backup iphoto library but I upgraded to aperture 3 recently and am worried that I have nit set crashplan up to backup the aperture library
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Mar 26, 2012
My Friend gave me his Old IMac G5 and when I boot it a question mark and the finder folder blinks. My friend says to install OS X because its running on nothing and I have been trying to install. OS X 10.6 but it wont respond to the Disk it just keeps blinking after a while it starts making this. Loud noise as if its running something, the furthest I've got it to a blue screen with a replay icon button. Towards the left and an arrow button pointing right but cant do anything after that, I don't know what to do. My other problem is the I have the latest wireless keyboard and wireless magic mouse so I cant connect them thru wifi until I have my imac running so im using a normal Dell Keyboard....
Info:
iMac
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Mar 4, 2009
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?
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Jun 3, 2009
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.
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Nov 2, 2009
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.
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Jun 14, 2012
I'm having the same problem, which I start-up my mac with the flashing question mark, but when I open the disk utility I don't have the Mac OS disk. I've only dvd-rom and "media" to choose. What can I do..
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.3)
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Dec 2, 2007
I searched the entire internet for this solution. I realize it has been posted but the symptoms were note entirely the same. I have a 1.6 g5. One night it was running awfully slow. I shut it down and didn't touch it for the weekend. When I came home the finder/? Thing flashes. Unlike some of the others, mine never boots and I don't have my discs to run the utility. Does this seem like a hard drive problem or am I looking at apples infamous logic board failure?
Information:
g5 powermac
Mac OS X (10.4.10)
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Jan 2, 2010
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.
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Jun 29, 2009
2.0GHz MacBook running 10.5. My friend's computer which he brought to me thinking I might be able to get it booted.
My buddy went to bed last night, running a video on his hard drive with the computer hooked up to his flat screen TV, he fell asleep while it was playing. This morning he woke up to a frozen screen. He did a manual shutdown. Upon restart he got a gray screen with nothing showing.
I have tried the original installation disk and restart while holding down "C" with no result.
I tried a copy of Tech Tools 5 in the DVD drive... with no result.
I have tried booting off of my own external firewire HD upon which I keep a bootable clone of os10.4.11... with no result.
I tried booting off that same external HD while holding down "C" and got the flashing folder with question mark.
I tried using a firewire cable and starting the bad macbook in target mode while hooked up to my old iBook. This caused the macbook screen to show a firewire symbol and nothing showed up on my iBook screen but an archive... Tech Tools on my iBook recognized the archive but could not Unmount the archive when I tried to use any of the tools to explore or fix the target disk.
I know that the flashing question mark indicates there is no start up software to be found, but I have to question whether this might not be something more than a bad HD. Anyone have any suggestions?
BTW... the macbook is out of warranty. My friend just went ahead and ordered a new macbook pro so there is no pressing need to get this fixed in a hurry, but he would like to get the old computer fixed if it is just a matter of replacing an HD.
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Sep 2, 2010
I have a Macbook OS X. This just happened when I turn on my Mac it goes to a folder with a flashing question mark. I don't know how to fix this so I just want to restore it. I have my Mac OS X disk in automatically tries to upgrade to v10.5 and when I put it in it asks what language and I click English and then after a minute it says Mac OS X v10.4 or later cannot be found on your computer. So how do I restore it to factory settings?
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Sep 28, 2010
I have a 13" macbook purchased 2007 just out of the extended protection plan this summer. Last night while watching a video in full screen it froze with the beach ball for over 20 minutes with no sign of stopping. I had my external WD drive hooked up which is my iTunes drive (only). I had to manually shutdown the computer (with external still hooked up) After trying to reboot I got the flashing question mark and continue to get it no matter what I do.
I've removed the external drive, reset the PRAM, tried booting in safe mode, tried booting from installation disc but my hard drive doesn't even appear in disk utility. Not sure what else I can try as nothing has worked.
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Dec 7, 2010
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!
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Dec 5, 2006
My Macbook wont start up. A folder with a question pop up. Tried C Key and TDM.
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Dec 20, 2008
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.
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May 24, 2010
Today I turned on my Macbook Pro and all that was displayed what a flashing question mark, what does it mean?
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