My iMac stays on 100% of the time, but a few months ago I turned it off for about 18 hours during a storm. When I turned it back on, I got the flashing question mark. I turned it off & back on about 8-10 times, when it finally booted up just fine.
It never does it at a reboot, only if off a while. For several months, it did this any time it was off a while.
About 6 weeks ago, it stopped doing it! Now, I can't MAKE it happen!
I should feel lucky, but I'm also nervous about an impending failure. When SL came out, I repartitioned the drive, first going to MBR, then back to GUID, just to re-write everything. That neither helped (the issue was already gone), nor hurt.
My iMac 20" is giving me white screen with the question Mark folder, some smack head formatted it and now it won't respond to the install disk, it won't even beep on a pram reset and there's no chime?
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'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]
I have a 20" G5 iMac with iSight that will not power up. No chime or screen activity. The first diagnostic LED is on which I assume means the power supply is OK, but the other LED's are off. Can any recommend what trouble shooting steps to take next?
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?
I have a Late 2005 Power mac G5, when I turn it on it boots up to a Folder with the glode in the middle. Then after a couple of minutes it goes to the Question mark. When I try to use the eject button on my keyboard nothing happens. The keyboard has no lights
at the first time i did not operate my mac mini for 3 months.when i want operate they like as usually but maybe on 5 minutes my mac mini off power.now power is on again but when power on my mac mini loading to desktop suddenly appear question mark folder on monitor.
I have a problem with my screen - when there is something black on, I can see a faint mark of a lighter colour. I have tried to take a picture, please excuse the poor quality. There is nothing visible when the screen is off, even under close examination. Is it less visible when lighter things are on the screen, and invisible when the screen is white.
No drops or liquid spills. Will this go away on it's own? Any fixes?
Suddenly yesterday when I powered mi iMac I had some horizontal green bars on the startup screen then it powered normally. But it happened two times, now every time I power on my iMac the screen stay black, and i can use my computer, everything else is working normally (i still can use Alfred to turn off my computer).
I already tried resetting the Command+Option+P+R, it didn't work. Also the Safe mode.
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.
For sometime now i have got this ghost mark on my macbook pro's screen. I did book an appointment at apple and showed someone at the genus bar but at the time he said it was just due to the keyboard pressing against the screen and if i cleaned it well it would go away. In saying this i had to buy this cleaning kit which he said would do the job. At the time in the apple store it did seem to fade but i now feel that was just due to the stores lighting. I still have the mark months later and its still as obvious as it was before. I was wondering if you guys have any advise on how to get rid. I only see it when its dark and there is black on the screen and though it doesnt bother me that much in a few weeks im selling this and would prefer to have the problem fixed. i did do some research and didnt find much, only thing i did find was about replacing the screen and i cannot do that due to time and money and am sure there is a easier way. i have attached a photo trying to show the ghost mark (in the black box) but because i took it on my iphone it doesnt show well.
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.
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've just noticed two small marks in the lower right-hand corner of my iMac's screen: a tiny horizontal line to the right of a dot. I can see them when I restart the computer, but not when the wallpaper is on the screen. Clear Screen won't remove them, but they don't seem to be scratches either, partly because I can't feel them. Do you think they're dust specks or something like them tat somehow got behind the screen? I hope there's a safe way to remove them because I hate to see them.
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 have a 13" Macbook. I had a 250 gb and a 500 gb internal hd's already crashed. I just bought a brand new 250 gb thought that this will work. I was wrong. I inserted this hd and turned on the on-switch. The same screen I saw earlier showed again-a blue screen with a file with a (?) sign on it.
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.
