Circle Slash at Startup

Approx two months ago I did a clean install of Lion on my Intel iMac due to some general bugginess and slowness. Following the install everything seemed to be running fine until yesterday when I started getting the beach ball doing some very basic tasks (opening email, Safari, etc). Not thinking much of it I restarted and was greeted with this after the restart:
Did some searching on this topic and wasn't able to find any difinitive answers on what this means and while I came across some posts that said this issue was resolved by a fresh install, I still suspect my HD is failing and the root of the problems. So I concluded the following:
     1. If it's motherboard related I won't be able to start up using a secondary start up disk
     2. If it's the HD I won't be able to access the files on it when I start up using a secondary disk
     3. If its OS related, a fresh install will resolve the issue
So the computer started right up using a secondary start up disk, I was able to access the files on the HD when I started up using the secondary disk, and a reinstall of Lion netted a big fat circle-slash once again.
At this point I think it's the HD.
Anyone have any thoughts or ideas on what might be going on?

Contact Apple Service, iMac Service or Apple's Express Lane. Do note that if you have AppleCare's protection plan and you're within 50 miles (80 KM) of an Apple repair station, you're eligible for onsite repair since yours is a desktop machine.

Similar Messages

Circle-slash on startup, MacPro 2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon

After attempting to get a friend's 3rd gen iPod to mount (only to retrieve data from it), I'm now getting a circle w/ a slash upon startup. it will, however, boot in "safe mode". My third year of AppleCare expired a little over a month ago, of course. Thought I'd try here before paying the $49 per incident support call, or reinstalling 10.6 fresh off disk, or restoring from Time Machine backup. And I figure that $50 would be spent for someone to tell me to do a fresh install or restore. I'd rather spend $100± on Disk Warrior, as this tower is aging, and I'd like to keep it for a while longer -- likely a smarter investment.
MP MacPro1,1 @ 2.66 GHz (x 4), 12288 MB RAM, running OS Build: Mac OS X 10.6 (10A432)
Apple Cinema 30"
12GB RAM
Internal boot drive is 250GB, with 100GB available
Any and all applicable firmware updates have been run, long ago.
1) i have disconnected all external hard drives and peripherals, save the Kensington turbo mouse because i can't find my original mouse
2) i have booted off the snow leopard disk to run disk utility.
a) running verify and repair (separately) both result "the volume appears to be ok."
b) repair permissions results:
Permissions differ on "usr/share/derby", should be drwxr-xr-x, they are lrwxr-xr-x
Repaired "usr/share/derby"
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAg ent" has been modified and will not be repaired
3) booting in single user mode stalls out immediately after "Apple Intel CPU Power Management initialization complete", then says "still waiting for root device" several times (i've waited as long as 10 minutes with the same repeating "still waiting for root device" before powering down.)
4) i've also reset the PRAM
5) i've also reset the SMC
I've read http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1892 BUT is there any way to repair the above permissions issue via Terminal? I suspect that's what the issue is because it's the only issue Disk Utility could identify. I'm scared of doing something stoopid in Terminal because I haven't clue #1 in that situation.
Any advice you could give would be very much appreciated.

I placed an AppleCare call, and the fine gentleman took pity on me, realizing I was but a month outside of my support and after reviewing the below, so I wasn't charged.
1) tried resetting the home folder permissions and ACLs via SL "reset password" utility, but that didn't work.
2) recommended "archive and install" via SL disk. which I did.
back up and running. will undoubtedly have some things to put back together, but cest la vie.

IMac 24" with intermittent circle/slash screen at start up issue

Hi Everyone,
Yesterday while listening to music on iTunes, my 3 year old iMac suddenly froze up. No sound, no mouse, no keyboard, nothing...I had to hold down the power switch to turn it off.
I powered it back on and up popped a white screen and a circle with a slash icon. I powered down again, unplugged the machine and let it sit for a while. Powered it up again with same results. Ugh.
At that point I reinstalled the OS (using the archive the previous system option). The install went fine and everything was back up a running..or so I thought....
Now every time I initially turn the iMac on, it goes to the circle/slash screen and hangs. I then power down using the power button. Press the power button again, it boots as normal and seems to work fine. Wacky.
Does this sound like a hardware issue or software issue? Hard drive failure? Format drive and reinstall from scratch?
Anyway, thanks in advance!

I would recommend doing an Apple Hardware Test to see if it is hardware. By the way you are describing the symptoms it could be a hard drive. If you purchased AppleCare the machine will be covered. If it is hardware then make an appointment with your local Apple Authorized Service Provder and they can get you an estimate.
Regards,
Roger

Once I put the Firefox Icon in Apps, it shows up as a white circle/slash (as in "no" or "stop") NOT the standard Firefox Icon. I checked plug-ins."Shockwave Flash" shows up Vulnerable. When I update, I get download warnings. (more below)

Downloaded Firefox and put it into my Apps folder as instructed. Its Icon in my Apps folder is not the Fox/Globe but a white icon of papers with a white circle&diagonal slash (like a white "stop" or do-not-enter sign). When I pulled that to my dock, it transferred there as the Fox/Globe; but I'm concerned about opening Firefox because that Icon in my Apps isn't right. I assumed the circle/slash icon telling me something's wrong with the App. So I checked the PlugIns.
The PlugIn tells me "Shockwave Flash" is "Vulnerable, Update Now." But there are warnings about that download. When I check that, showing I'm a Mac, it gives me warnings for Windows!- but no warnings for Macs. What's going on?!
Why am I not getting the standard Firefox Icon in my Apps folder?
I don't want to corrupt my HD by opening Firefox if that Icon is telling me somethings wrong... (which seems the point of its circle/slash).
This is all so unclear!

What is your current Flash Player version: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/installation-problems-flash-player-windows.html ?
What is your display adapter, driver version & date? See http://forums.adobe.com/thread/945765

My screen is stuck on the circle slash logo

My computer will not boot up. The circle slash appears right after the apple when i turn the power. How do I get past this?

Hi c, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
Run Repair Disk: Boot from install disc (insert disc>restart>immediately hold down c key and keep holding it until you see “Preparing Installation”)>at first screen select the language and click Continue> click on the Utilities Menu in the menu bar>open Disk Utility>select your HD in the panel on the left side>click Repair Disk at bottom of main window. Run this at least twice, and keep running it until it says “appears ok” twice in a row. If that doesn’t happen, you may need a stronger utility such as DiskWarrior or if the directory is damaged beyond repair, you may need to reinstall the OS, or you may have a damaged HD (repair utilities can only repair the directory structure, not the HD itself).

OS X Mountain Lion Circle Slash on USB Installation

I have Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 and trying to install Mountain Lion on my unsupported iMac, I followed the thread http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1325818 to do this on my MacBook late 2006 worked perfect. But when I create a parition on Lion, and restore the partition using Disk Utility to InstallESD.dmg everything went suceessfull except when I try this on my 17" iMac 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo I get a circle slash when booting from the partition no spinning wheel or anything! Been at this since 10:00 AM now it's 11:00 PM I'm tearing my hair out with this one! How can I get this installed? Or how can I remove the circle slash thing?

Sorry, but we cannot assist you with an unauthorized installation of OS X. Look to whomever provided you with the hack for help.
Note that the hack will not work with the current version of Mountain Lion. It only worked with Developer Preview 1.

OS X Lion Circle Slash on bootup w/ filevault enabled

This morning there was an update for the Apple's remote desktop client. So I installed it and rebooted my Macbook Air for some reason. Guess I thought I was on a windows machine. Needless to say, I can not get back to my desktop. My harddrive is encrypted using filevault. I get to the user screen, procceed to unlock the drive and then it goes to the Apple logo which quickly changes to the Circle Slash logo and nothing happens.
The worse part is I'm moving this week and I packed up my time machine and haven't run it since last Saturday and have already done a lot of work. Which typically figures right? Murphys law.
Any suggestions or help would be appericated.
Oh, the drive also has bootcamp and I am able to still boot into Windows, which I'm using now. Joy, Windows <sarcasm>

Sorry, but we cannot assist you with an unauthorized installation of OS X. Look to whomever provided you with the hack for help.
Note that the hack will not work with the current version of Mountain Lion. It only worked with Developer Preview 1.

Backlit Keyboard/Circle Slash on F8

Hello good folks,
I have a PB 15 inch 1.67 running 10.5. 2 gb RAM. My keyboard illumination is not working.
1. The option is checked "on" in Prefs.
2. It used to work. Does not now.
3. When I hit F8, 9 or 10, the dreaded Circle Slash sign (ie, "do not ...") pops up at the bottom off the indicator on the screen.
Do I have a hardware issue? I can't find any documentation about the Circle Slash indicator.
Thanks.

On mine, the circle-slash appears at the bottom of the indicator when I try those keys AND there is enough light that the backlight is not activated.
Cover both speaker grilles completely with something light tight (e.g. paperback books) and see if the keyboard backlight system activates. It sometimes surprises me just how sensitive to light the sensors are. The room may be dark, but if just enough light hits one speaker grill in just the right place, the backlight stays off.

Getting circle with slash at startup...

My computer started to get really slow one night so I decided to restart it, but then I ended up with the circle with slash error and couldn't now can't get past it. Here is what I have tried so far: Reset PRAM. Tried to "repair disc" using disc utilities, eneded up with an error (sorry, dont remember what the error was!). Had planned on re-installing the OS by erasing the hard drive, ended up with the follwing error "Disc erase failed. POSIX reports: The operation couldn't be completed. No such file or directory" Starting to think replacing the hard drive might be the easiest option, unless anyone knows what's going on?? Thanks!

((((((Were you doing this from the the DVD because that's the way to do it.))))))
Yes.
((((By now it sounds like you have written off the existing OS and want to reinstall it again. What problem are you having trying to do this?
Will it restart and allow you to boot into the DVD for you to reinstall?)))
Yep, it will allow me to boot from the dvd. I everything backed up on an external drive using time machine. When I tried to "restore system from back up" under "utilities" after inserting the DVD, there is a section where you select the disc where you want to restore your system to and my main hard drive isn't even showing up in the list...

Circle/slash error at start up

Having problems with my iMac.
First it was slowing down, showing regularly beach balls for a fairly long time, used to have Kernel Panics once in a while. Slowed down more and more often. Decided to do a reinstall. Backed up. First Leopard, than Snow Leopard. Worked well again.
Than I used my back up from Time machine to recreate the original user. Didn't start up after that.
First showing the grey Apple logo for a long time, than hanging in a blue screen with the rotating circle, showing the mouse pointer on and off, than after restarting showing a grey circle with a slash.
What can it be? Is it the Harddrive (it runs day and night as a 'DLNA media server'), is it the RAM, or the logic board?
What can I do to test? If it wil start up with the instal DVD, will it automatically mean it is a Harddive issue or is that conclusion not valid?
Any help appreciated. This iMac is TOO YOUNG to die before my eyes!

I would recommend doing an Apple Hardware Test to see if it is hardware. By the way you are describing the symptoms it could be a hard drive. If you purchased AppleCare the machine will be covered. If it is hardware then make an appointment with your local Apple Authorized Service Provder and they can get you an estimate.
Regards,
Roger

Circle slash during snow leopard install

Mac book pro, 2006 model, has been running the snow leopard update install for four days. Screen is grey with do not enter circle and slash. The ticker is moving still and there is sound of the drive moving. Should it take this long. Should I pull the plug. I have everything backed up but would like the update to complete. I just tried calling apple, but I do not want to pull my battery out to see the serial number, they would not patch me through to a technical expert without the serial number.
Suggestions?

It takes no more than half an hour to complete the Install or any update once the files are available on your computer. Something has been damaged.
This article covers the Prohibitory sign:
Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup

Apple logo and spinning circle only on startup - never loads

I foolishy changed permissions on the whole volume to try and give a new user Read&Write permissions to the whole volume and set it to propagate the new permissions down through the whole volume, and now when I power on my MacBook Pro, I see the Apple logo, a spinning wheel for a few minutes, and then it reboots itself, never loading the OS. I searched these forums and the internet for hours last night. It seems pretty clear from my research that I caused problems by changing permissions.
I can't boot into Safe mode.
I can boot into single user mode.
I can book to the install CD and run Disk Utilities.
I've tried Repair Disk and Repair Permissions from the Disk Utility several times. Verify Disk never finds any problems, but no matter how many times I run the Repair Permissions option, I still get a very long list of "ACL found but not expected on <filenames>. . .]"
I also found countless sites with instructions on running commands in single user mode:
mount -uw /
and then tried all of these suggestions-
chmod 775 /
chmod 1775 /
chmod o+r /
and a host of other variations
I do have BootCamp with Vista installed, and can boot into Vista with no problems, so it would seem the HDD itself is physically fine.
Any suggestions?
Snow Leopard is set to arrive before 3 pm today by FedEx. Would running the Snow Leopard upgrade from the boot CD correct any remaining permission issues when it over-writes what's currently there? If you're not sure, any ideas on how to proceed with fixing the current 10.5.8 installation?
Thanks in advance. I'm at my wits end, and very groggy from fighting this all night
Message was edited by: San Diego Darin

Actually, that wasn't the end of the log. My apologies.
There are quite a few errors.
Examples:
Could not connect to USB mux port 32498 for device 2: Permission denied
Dubious permissions on file (skipping): /Library/LaunchAgents
Dubious permissions on file (skipping): /System/Library/LaunchAgents
Dubious permissions on file (skipping): /etc/machinit_per_loginsession.d
SystemStarter 33: "/Library/StartupItems" failed sanity check: path was created after boot up
SystemStarter 33: "/System/Library/StartupItems" failed sanity check: path was created after boot up

Circle Slash "Do Not Enter" on boot after iDefrag

I ran iDefrag last night because my MBP was running sooooo slow. I barely ever use it and it has 300 GB of free space. I used to use OnyX to optimise the disks on Snow Leopard but I didn't see that option in Lion. I let iDefrag run and went to sleep. This morning I woke up to the Do Not Enter sign and the spinning thing below it. I made sure I left it plugged in so I don't understand what happened.
How do I fix this and not lose my data?

boblaudermilk wrote:
I ran iDefrag last night because my MBP was running sooooo slow. I barely ever use it and it has 300 GB of free space. I used to use OnyX to optimise the disks on Snow Leopard but I didn't see that option in Lion. I let iDefrag run and went to sleep. This morning I woke up to the Do Not Enter sign and the spinning thing below it. I made sure I left it plugged in so I don't understand what happened.
How do I fix this and not lose my data?
Despite some software developers claims, Macs do not require defraging and therefore the cause of the system slow down will be found elsewhere. It sounds, unfortunately, that your HDD may have been ready to die and iDrag just put the final nail in it. Unless you can get it to mount by repairing it with something like DiskWarrior, then I would think, given that it sounds like you have no backup, that you may be in some trouble here. Do you have any form of backups?
Pete

So ive installed windows 7 on my 2006macbook, sure wish i didnt, now when i try to clean install snowleo, all i get is the circle slash, none of the mac keycommands work, ive tried installing fromusb and from dvd to no avail, any help would be appreciated

sorry, seems my title is a little long, says it all though, cant boot from usb, cant boot from disc, any thoughts? need my mac bac!!!

i thought about the same thing so i had restored my mac to factory settings did all the updates and tried again however when i dowloaded the software for windows and put it in a cd for me it never said partition y always said install so i would click it but as my comment above it would read the disc for a few seconds and stop all together and not install the software.

Getting prohibitory icon at startup on G3 iBook...

Hi all,
Just picked up a 500mhz iBook for very short money knowing it was troubled. I get the circle/slash on startup. I've tried:
Safe Mode
Verbose Mode
Single-User Mode
Boot from CD
Reset PRAM/NVRAM
Reset PMU
Nothing has worked. Could a bad hard drive cause all this? Bad RAM?? I'm hoping a logic board issue won't cause this, but I'm prepared for anything. I get the startup chime, it takes a LONG time to get to the gray apple and spinning gear screen, then after a couple minutes I get the circle/slash. Any other ideas to try??
Thanks,
Tom

Hi, Tom.
See if anything in this Apple Knowledge Base article helps:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106805
How much RAM is installed?
Do you know which version of the OS is installed? Are you using the correct CD to attempt a boot from it?
A bad hard drive should not keep it from starting up from the CD. Have you tried using _Startup Manager_? Sometimes it will allow you to select the CD for startup when holding down the c key doesn't work.
Good luck.

Circle Slash at Startup

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for