Folder with question mark keeps showing on boot screen

folder with question mark keeps showing on boot screen

Click here and follow the instructions. If the computer was running Mac OS X 10.6.8 or earlier and you reach the third set of steps, insert a Mac OS X install disk.
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Folder with question mark keeps coming back

Hello there , i have a problem with my mac pro.
The problem is that every time i start up the mac it can't find my startup disk and then gives me the Folder with ? mark in it.
Some times just do a start up for the second time helps but most of the time i will have to hold the alt button pressed, and then some times i get to choose my start up disk from there but most of the time it then starts up from my boot disk.
When it has started up and i then go to the pref's , select my boot disk and lock the prefs so basicly it would not be able to chance that disk without my password, i find the next time i start it up, with all the same problems, the lock is also no more activated in my prefs.
I tried several things already, resseting power management, pram , Applejack, combo update 10.5.5, repare permissions ...., until now nothing helped solve the problem.
My Mac Pro 8 core, was just back from the dealer to get a new raid card battery and it worked fine for a while.
The startup disk is disk 1 in JBOD on the raid card by the way.
I feel that this problem started occuring after the 10.5.5 and java updates
but since those 3 things came very close together i'm not 100% sure.
I hope someone here can help me out with finding a fix for this problem because i have run out of ideas and i wanna avoid a reinstall of my system .
Thank you for your help ,Data from the Netherlands.

I tried several things already, resseting power management, pram , Applejack, combo update 10.5.5, repare permissions ...., until now nothing helped solve the problem.
I am not ready to say Applejack is as safe as it use to be.
I can say that making a backup with SuperDuper is essential; as is having OS X "EMergency" boot partition or drive (FW, someone said that used 8 or 16GB SDHC memory card).
And use Disk Warrior along with Apple First Aid to repair your drives.
Anytime you zap pram or SMC you have to reset the startup disk, and it sounds like your disk or NVRAM is a problem.
Personally, I like a single fast dedicated boot drive; or, a stripped RAID (and instead of mirror better off keeping a good backup image cloned).
So clone your system only to another drive with SuperDuper.
Repair your boot drive with Disk Utility and Disk Warrior (or TechTool Deluxe/Pro).
If you think 10.5.5 may have caused it, roll back to 10.5.4, that is what backups and making a clone of your boot drive are good for. And always make a backup before you even begin to upgrade the system.

Folder with question mark keeps flashing on startup

I was using the internet on my macbook pro 13 ich late 2011 model this morning while a youtube video was being streamed and it suddenly froze. the cursor was moving though and i thought this must be an issue with the amount of heat the mac was accumalating and i switched it off by pressing the power button.
When I restarted it, the screen was white, it chimed and after a few seconds, a folder with a question mark in it kept flashing.
i Looked up some forums whuch suggested i press option on startup and it only took me to internet recovery mode whilst not detecting a hardrive. i pressed command+R and it took me to internet recovery mode.
finally i called a mac engineer over and asked him to take a look at my computer. he first opened it and checked the connections. he then booted it up, smae problem. after that, he inserted a pen drive with OSX mavericks on it and booted it while option was pressed and this time, disk utility came up, but in disk utility, there was no sign of my hard disk at all and only the USB storage was displayed.he then went on to tell me that my hard disk has crashed and i should get a replacement. But i dont understand why the mac didnt indicate i had any problems with my harddisk at all because i know macintosh to be very meticulous. i've tried everything except for an internet recovery and dont know what to do. the startup manager is also not displaying
please help me as i do not want to want to change my harddrive without my system telling me theres something wrong with it and because i think this guy is trying to fleece me. Please Help. is there anything I can do to fix the problem?

The hard drive or cable is bad.
The system does tell you....well sort of. There's a monitoring system named "SMART" or self moniitoring, analysis, and reporting technology) but it's not really all that good at predicting as the following will tell you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.
It's supposed to monitor your system, but a Google study some years ago on a large number of drives found it's ability to predict wasn't that great.
If it's of any help, the following link provides a list of all drive related utiltiies (or most of them, anyway) for Macs, ranging from the free (like Disk Utility) to open source, to some of the most expensive. It's a good link. Some of the sites associated with them have self help and info pages.
Here's the link:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1544280
My advice would be 1) KEEP GOOD BACKUPS and 2) Use a tool to periodically scan the drive for errors or developing errors.

Tried doing a clean install of lion and now have a folder with question mark appearing when mac boots

I purchased a 2011 mac mini I was having some issues and as I had already bought lion for one of my other macs and put it on a usb key I formatted the mac mini's hdd and put the usb key in to one of the Mini's usb ports and booted the mini up and held down c when the white scren appeard it stayed white for a few secnds and then a folder with a question mark started flashing no option to select my connected usb key I tried several more re boots and each time got the exact same result.
What on earth has apple done so now I can't even access attached drives during booting.
Any ideas how I can sort this out?

Maybe it is not "what has Apple done" You may have jumped the gun a little formatting your system so quickly without ensuring you can actually boot via an alternate method.
The mini has a recovery partition, and instructions how to reinstall the OS from that.
USB drive. Sounds to me like you don't have a proper OSX Bootable USB drive?
Also, the new way Apple allows reinstallation is over the internet too.

Boot up shows folder with question mark...

So my imac from 2006 (i think...20 inch plastic intel) booted up today to the blinking folder with a question mark on it. I rebooted into the osx disc to set the hdd as the startup disk, but it didn't show up in the list. Then I tried to see if I needed to repair the hdd using disk utility but the hdd wasn't showing up. So, do I have to replace the hdd? Not looking forward to it if I do.
Message was edited by: gescamil

Hi,
I have had similar issues, you will have to restart it and press and hold the eject disk on the keyboard right away and it will force it out.
Also to answer you question on way you are not seeing the Hard Drive and way you have the folder with question mark on the start up: is because your Hard Drive is dead.
You will need to buy another Hard Drive install it and then fresh install the OS X.
I have seen this issue too many times and every time is resulting with bad Hard Disk Drive...
Look at the bright side, Hard Drives are cheep now and you have iFix it to assist you on step by step installation. (this is unless you have Apple Care).

I have macbook mid 2009, with os leopard and I updated it till yosemite now while deleting partition I erased the main hitachi drive , now I have no backups and while switching on it shows folder with question mark,inserting the grey dvd it keep spin

Have macbook mid 2009, with leopard, updated to yosemite, while erasing partition erased hd, dot have backups, powerup shows folder with question mark, inserting grey dvd shows apple and spinning wheel, please help

Clean Install of Snow Leopard
     1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc or the Disc 1 that came
         with your computer. Insert the disc into the optical drive and restart the computer.
         After the chime press and hold down the "C" key. Release the key when you see
         a small spinning gear appear below the dark gray Apple logo.
     2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
         button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
         After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
         size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of
         partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, click on Options button
         and select GUID, click on OK, then set the format type to MacOS Extended
         (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Apply button.
     3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed
         with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
     4. When the installation has completed your computer will Restart into the Setup
         Assistant. Be sure you configure your initial admin account with the exact same
         username and password that you used on your old drive. After you finish Setup
         Assistant will complete the installation after which you will be running a fresh
         install of OS X. You can now begin the update process by opening Software
         Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your installation current.
Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1. From here you can upgrade to Yosemite by re-downloading it from the Purchases page in the App Store.

Ssd can't boot from mainbay folder with question mark

Hello I've searched for my problem but can't find anything same so I'm gona ask.
first of all I'm sorry for my English.
I'm using MacBook pro mid 2012 with samsung 840 evo ssd 500gb.
today it was working perfect it felt asleep and after wake up it restarted and flashing folder with question mark appeared on screen.
I Know it's some kind of hdd problem. So I've took it out and put in external box to connect to my friends MacBook to see if it's working and does all information is still in it. It was working perfectly. after that I connected it via usb and boot it by holding opt key and it startups normal. To check that it isint sata cable I have puted empty hdd in main bay and booted from ssd connected by usb and both drives show up in disk utility.
So hdd working perfect. Sata cable is good and can read drive.
Macbook boots from ssd connected by usb without any problems.
The only problem is that I can't boot my MacBook from ssd in mainbay it shows flashing folder with question mark.
Maybe anyone had had that issue before.?
How can I solve this problem.?
again sorry for my English. And thank you for all your answers.

Do not apologize for your English. I assure you your English is better than what my facility with your language may be.
I have seen a couple of posts similar to yours where the SSD will not boot internally but a conventional HDD will. The resolution in one case was a new SATA cable even though the tests suggested otherwise.
I would take the MBP to an apple store and have them check it thoroughly and see if they can pinpoint to the cable as the problem. Obviously this just a guess on my part.
A call to Samsung technical support may also be a good idea.
Ciao.

Mac Shows Folder With Question Mark On Startup?

Hey Guys!
I currently own a Macbook Air First Genereation (2008) running on Lion 10.7.5 (upgraded from Snow Leopard)
Recently, when I was just using the Macbook Air, the Hard disk started spinning and was creating a lot of noise well I just ignored it and gave it a hard reboot
So the next day wehn I booted my mac it was showing a folder with question mark on startup. I tried going to recovery (holding option on startup) but neither Macintosh HD or Recovery HD was being shown. I tried a internet recovery but it was not even entering Internet Recovery. I tried Single User mode, that didn't work.
I really don't know what to do now, I am panicking cause I don't have a backup and all my schoolwork is inside there.
Please reply soon and thanks in advance if you can help me
A youtube tutorial or online step by step tutorial would be great!

My tutorial is simple: pack up the MBA and charger and head for the nearest Apple store or Apple reseller. The error you see can mean three things: (1) your drive's system files are damaged, (2) your drive's directory or partition are damaged, or (3) your drive is dead. The fact that you can't boot into the recovery mode pretty much eliminates #1. It is possible that your drive's partition table was damaged but were that the case I'd expect that Internet recovery would work. So I strongly suspect #3.

Folder with question mark + wont boot from disk

Hi
I am trying to reinstall a powermac g5 from the disk, using a old hard drive that works.. (formatted in NTFS) (hoping that when selected to boot from disk, mac will then erase and reformat it)this image is presented when i hold down the option key and the disk ejects this other image is presented when i hold down C (folder with question mark blinking) and the disk ejects... also presented if i boot normally.... Could some help be offered please??????
Powermac G5
Thank you in advance

Yes, you must Format it HFS+ first...
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/partitioning_tiger.html
(To Install OSX on an IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
Thanks to Pondini, Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks...
http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html

Folder with Question Mark on Boot

I can't get my mac to boot. Instead I get the gray screen and a folder with question mark icon. I'm guessing the HD is dead? Any chance for recovery? If not how much does a new one cost? The one year warranty just expired!
Please help!
Thanks,
Brian

So, what is it? The thing froze today and wont reboot - just a gray screen with NOTHING. Then after about 10 min. the flashing question mark folder appears.
So, I popped in the install DVD that came with the computer, get the little gray Apple logo and it boots from the DVD.
Launch Disc Utility. The HD appears on the left. Click on it - all of the "Verify" and "Repair" buttons remain grayed out. So what the hxll do I do?
I cant boot into single-user mode or any other mode for that matter.
This is a Macbook pro, dual-core Intel, less than a year old.

Help please! My macbook air (2015) startup showed a folder with question mark so i tried "Command R" for internet recovery but after few minutes it stopped and showed error.. Please hepl me!

Help please! My macbook air (2015) startup showed a folder with question mark so i tried "Command R" for internet recovery but after few minutes it stopped and showed error.. Please hepl me!

Startup – Question Mark
Startup Issues - Resolve
Startup Issues - Resolve (2)
Startup Issues - Resolve (3)

My MacBook pro stop working and it shows folder with question mark after this update, it's not my fault, Apple should solve the problem with out ask me to make payment

After updating my MacBook pro it shows only a folder with question mark on it
It is not my fault, Apple updates problem
They should solve it fir me without make any payment
Thanks

Try starting your computer holding down the option key as soon as you hear the startup sound, and continue holding it. Hopefully, you will see the icon for your startup disk come up on your screen within a minute. Click on that icon and press return. If your machine starts up normally from there, go to System Preferences > Startup Disk and reselect your startup volume

When booting up get flashing apple folder with question mark and no sign, why?

When booting up get flashing apple folder with question mark and no sign, why? Computer will not open up. I have tried resetting the Pram. I can access the hard drive from another computer holding down the t key when starting up the Macbook Pro. What to do next?

The cable connecting the HDD to the logic board may be faulty. If the internal HDD can boot the MBP when in an external enclosure, that will confirm this issue. If not, the HDD may need to be replaced.
Ciao.

Switched on my imac 24inch intel based and all I get on screen is a folder with question mark flashing,I had backup on external hard drive but when I try to reinstall it can not find my mac hard drive

Hi when I started my intel based imac this morning all I am getting is a folder with question mark in the middle flashing,I have external hard drive with backup,but when run disc utilities it does not show my mac hard drive.hope someone can help.(it's running mountain lion, well it was)

Try starting up your Mac while holding down the Option key. That should prompt the Startup Manager window where you can select the startup disk then click Restart.
The question mark folder indicates your Mac cannot find a system folder to boot from.
A flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac

Flashing folder with question mark at Startup

Here is what I know so far.
- The computer was powered off by pushing the power button without shutting down.
- The computer was then restarted and it was coming into the white screen with the Apple logo in the middle, but i noticed that it was skewed slightly (like someone took a 4:3 ratio screen and stretched it to a 16:9) and then it would show a circle slash icon and then the flashing folder with a question mark on it.
- It would not come up in single user mode (Command + S) and it said that there was an error loading kernel 'mach_kernel'
- It would not come up in safe mode (Shift)(The flashing folder came up again)
- I reset the PRAM (Command + Option + p + r) and it seemed to fix the problem with the stretched screen but did not help the boot situation (still got flashing folder)
- I did the start up where you can select the hard drive to boot with, it owed the HD and i selected it, but then i got the flashing folder with question mark.
- It would not come up in Verbose Mode (Command V) Error loading Kernel again.
- I bought a FireWire cable and hooked it to another MacBook Pro, and booted the faulty Mac into Target Disk Mode, the FireWire logo came up on the screen and bounced around like all forums said that it would, but the drive would not show up on my host. I checked the System Profiler on the host and it did acknowledge the Target Disk Mode was there, but the drive of the target would not show up on the host. I restarted the host, nothing. I checked all of the connections, nothing. I replugged all of the connections, nothing. I even reversed the FireWire cable, nothing.
- I have DiskWarrior 4 if i can get the drive to show up in TDM, but nothing so far.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks for your help guys. I managed to get the computer started by holding down C at the Start Up with the Install Disc 1 in the computer. The disc was really kindof unnecessary, as the newest version of Mac OS X (10.4.10) became available via the hard drive.
I then found out that the battery was not installed, so I reset the management system by removing the A/C power, the battery and pushing the power button for 5 seconds, and then reconnecting everything. It did not help, the battery is bad i guess, so I am going to call AppleCare and get a new battery.
Thanks for your help.

Folder with question mark keeps showing on boot screen

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