MBP - 13 inch won't boot

my mac book pro has a file image flashing on the white screen with a question mark in the middle and won't boot up. What can I do to recover the data and get the computer to reboot?
David Olson

That icon means no drive with an installed loadable OS are found. There are three possibilities:
hd sata cable is broken
hd is broken or partition is corrupted
logic board is broken
First you can try to boot in recovery mode (with mac os x cd or a usb recovery drive) and repair the hard drive. I think you'll not find a hard drive installed since you should have at least the recovery hd bootable (give us more infos, os verison, mac version..).
Second you can try to install your internal drive somewere else, if it is not broken you can read data (with another mac or a linux box) and save them. In this case you probably need just a new sata cable.

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Early 2008 MBP source drive won't boot after cloning

I cloned the original/source drive, via USB, Carbon Copy Cloner, to a Crucial MX100 256GB SSD. The clone process completed without errors. I powered down the system to do a start-up from the USB drive to see if it would boot. The computer will not start from the source drive and holding the Option key to select a boot drive never gets that far.
I can hear the optical drive try to spin up, the status light blinks quickly like it is trying to start and then quits, remaining a steady light. I have tried Cmd + R at boot without success. Tried the PRAM reset, also the SMC reset.
There is plenty of room on the source drive, at least 160GB. The target drive is the same size as the source drive.
Prior to cloning the source drive and powering down, the computer was operating flawlessly. This an early 2008 model with the 2.5Mhz processor.
Any recommendations? I am hesitant to remove the source drive and install the cloned SSD for concern that I'll end up with some other trouble.
I do not have a start up disk. BTW, the OS X is Yosemite, the most recent version, .10, I think.
Thanks,
Bob

wsev1955 wrote:
I have a HP Pavilion Dv4170us laptop added some new upgrades to it.. max RAM 2GB... a new battery... and I bought a 160GB samsung IDE drive to replace the origional 100GB drive...Using EZ Gig II software and usb drive adapter I successfuly cloned the smaller hard drive but when I swaped them out it won't boot windows xp.. just a black screen with the blinking curser at the top left corner... using my windows xp pro disc.. i ran the system recovery and tried first fix mbr command... then I tried fixboot.. I also looked for the boot.ini file which is not in the C: root drive...I only found a back up copy of it in the windows/pss folder... this is on both drives.. so the cloeing copied it all... but the origional drive will boot and the new one won't... I even tried reinstalling XP as a repair installation...still nothing... any ideas??
Hi,
Can you see the new hdd in the BIOS?
Dv6-7000 /Full HD/Core i5-3360M/GF 650M/Corsair 8GB/Intel 7260AC/Samsung Pro 256GB
Testing - HP 15-p000
HP Touchpad provided by HP
Currently on Debian Wheeze
*Please, help other users with the same issue by marking your solved topics as "Accept as Solution"*

Powerbook 12 inch won't boot and I need to create a startup CD/DVD

My son's PB 12" won't boot up. We are on vacation and I have my 13 macbook with me, but none of the support disks.. I am wondering if there is a way to create a boot CD/DVD from mine to use with his, to hopefully get his computer working again. Any help would be great!

Hi, Ross. No, there isn't. The OS that runs your Intel-based MacBook won't run at all on the PPC-based Powerbook.
Hold down the Command and S keys on the Powerbook while turning it on, and use fsck in Single-User Mode to attempt file system repairs, as described in this article.

IMac g5 (isight) 20 inch won't boot up from harddrive or cd

Hey! I am going to make this all very clear and explain everything to the best of my ability (this might be long).
My friend gave me this iMac g5 with the built in iSight. The computer was not functioning properly, so I decided to see if I could find some help fixing it.
Basically, like many others, my computer is stuck on the grey loading screen, and I can't figure out what operating system it is running because of this. I asked my friend what OS it was running and he said he didn't know. I have tried EVERYTHING to fix it. Here's a list:
Pressed Option key at start (nothing happened)
Pressed C key at start with Disk Warrior in the cd drive (won't boot from cd)
Pressed C key with Tiger OSX in cd drive (won't boot from cd)
Reset the PRAM to no avail
Reset the SMU to no avail
Infact, the only thing that seems to work is COMMANDOPTION+OF ...and I don't know what to do when i get to that screen...i've been using it to eject cd's from the imac...thats about all i know.
PLEASE HELP! I DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO!

Thankyou for your response!
Unfortunately, I have been to that support page. I cannot even get into disk utility, let alone the mac osx software.
is there anything else i can try? maybe something in open firmware since its the boot key that works

Problems with Late 2011 MBP (catalog corrupt, won't boot from USB/CD)

Hello,
I have had some problems with my Late 2011 MBP running OSX 10.8.x (latest update)
I was using Safari when suddenly my screen froze. It has happened a couple of times before but it usually is either: 1.) a black screen for 5 seconds while nothing works responds and then it continues work like nothing happened, or 2.) just a freeze for a moment which goes away within a few seconds. I have visited the official service and they found nothing wrong with my laptop and said that it may have been just random occurrence. This time it froze and as I waited the fans went crazy and had no other option but to shut down from the power button. Later, when I wanted to boot up, it gets to the Apple logo, the circle spins and the small bar below appears and after a second or two, it disappears and then the computer shuts down. I went to recovery mode and used disk utility to verify and repair the problem (which only works to find out the problem, not to fix it, thanks anyway apple) Heres what it showed:
Verifying volume “nihil”
Checking file systemChecking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Keys out of order
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file .mdworker_2013-07-21-081г41_эartin-RichaѲds-эacBѯok-ѐro.crash.plist
(It should be 0 instead of 4398046511104)
Illegal name
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file .mdworker_2013-07-22-б20303_MartiѮ-RiѣharѤs-MѡcBoѯk-Pro.crash.plist
(It should be 0 instead of 67108864)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 60851670)
(It should be 1 instead of 67108865)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect block count for file .mdworker_2013-08-04-145002_Martin-Richards-MacBook-Pro.crash.plist
(It should be 0 instead of 1024)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file .opendirectoryd_201г-08-04-б516а5_MѡrtiѮ-Riѣhards-MacBook-Pro.crash.plist
(It should be 0 instead of 67108864)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 66286495)
(It should be 1 instead of 67108865)
Invalid catalog record type
The volume nihil could not be verified completely.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Verify and Repair volume “nihil”
Checking file systemChecking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Keys out of order
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file .mdworker_2013-07-21-081г41_эartin-RichaѲds-эacBѯok-ѐro.crash.plist
(It should be 0 instead of 4398046511104)
Illegal name
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file .mdworker_2013-07-22-б20303_MartiѮ-RiѣharѤs-MѡcBoѯk-Pro.crash.plist
(It should be 0 instead of 67108864)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 60851670)
(It should be 1 instead of 67108865)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect block count for file .mdworker_2013-08-04-145002_Martin-Richards-MacBook-Pro.crash.plist
(It should be 0 instead of 1024)
Invalid extent entry
Invalid extent entry
Incorrect size for file .opendirectoryd_201г-08-04-б516а5_MѡrtiѮ-Riѣhards-MacBook-Pro.crash.plist
(It should be 0 instead of 67108864)
File has incorrect number of links (id = 66286495)
(It should be 1 instead of 67108865)
Invalid catalog record type
The volume nihil could not be verified completely.
Volume repair complete.Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.Error: Disk Utility can’t repair this disk. Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files.
I tried to boot DiskWarrior from a USB and a CD, after pushing enter in the bootable device's screen, I get a continuous loop of 3 beeps and I can't boot from either of the mediums.
I also tried the Single-user mode (Command-s when booting) and the /sbin/fsck -fy said that my HD is not completely verifiable. Also, 3/4 of the files mentioned in disk utility are also mentioned in this process, with errors as forrows: keys out of order, invalid index key, invalid extent entries (7 times), incorrect block counts, number of links and incorrect sizes for the foretold files and invalid catalog record type.
The reason why I'm not doing a clean install is that the last few days I've been in the process of deleting unnecessary items on my laptop so I could make a back-up (as for some reason, Time Machine is awfully slow and a new 600 gb backup would take and enormous amount of time, but that's a problem for another day) and as I had not yet reached the backing up part, my data is locked on this (possibly) corrupt HD. How should I advance and what steps should I take?
My first and most important mission would be to get back into my OS to make a back-up. Then I'd deal with the "not being able to boot form USB nor CD" and the TM problem.
Thank you all in advance,
Martin

Before you even start, consider that there may be no Windows 7 driver support for some of the hardware in your laptop. You won't know which hardware devices and functions are unsupported until you find out the hard way. In some cases, a driver conflict could cripple your computer.
Like most OEMS, Toshiba pre-installs Windows 8 to boot with EFI on a GPT hard drive. Your Windows 7 install disc, on the other hand, most likely boots with a BIOS from an MBR. Therefore, your Windows 7 disc will not boot your computer.
You would need to start by performing a low-level format of your hard drive. This completely erases the disc and its metadata. Then you could boot from your Windows installation disc and try to install Windows 7. How successful you will be depends on driver support.
All things considered, you should stay with Windows 8. Next time, more research before you buy.

Having software issues, MBP mid 2012 won't boot

I recently had my MBP fail to boot, it would only load to a flashing folder with a question mark on it. I've had many suggestions as to what could be causing it, and so far I've disproven a couple. It isn't an issue with the hard drive, as I've run the extensive hardware test and everything checked out fine. Also, I took it in to geek squad since I had a membership with them and they also said the hardware was fine. They checked the SATA interface wire and it also checked out okay. They said that it was a software issue that was unavoidable, so they backed up my hard drive, wiped it clean, did something that they call "removing excess security titles," put the data back on my laptop and gave it back. It worked fine for all of 6 hours (6 total, only 1 hour of use) and then crashed again. The blinking "?" folder appeared again. Also, when I boot with the option key held, or command + R and then enter disk utility, my hard drive still does not appear in the startup manager or the disk utility window that usually lists hard drives found. "Macintosh HD" does not appear anywhere, and neither does "Recovery HD". The only drive I can get to show up is my external drive that I use for time machine. this means that I cannot select the drive (Macintosh HD) that I wish to place my time machine backup onto. Please let me know if anyone else has had this issue, and let me know if there are any suggestions on how to resolve this issue (preferred without taking it to apple store, dont have any near me.) Thanks in advance.
I posted a related question yesterday, so if you would like some more background info on the matter, you can read this one as well.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/26090958#26090958

Resolved this issue myself, and have decided to never trust Geek Suqad with any of my tech again. The issue was simply a faulty SATA cable. I didnt buy an external enclosure, but I did get a friend to let me pop the hood on his MBP and swap SATA's for a couple minutes. It booted perfectly to my desktop without any lag.
Reasons why Geek Squad will never see me again...
1. They charged me $80 for a data backup when I could have easily done that myself at home.
2. They misdiagnosed my problem as a "software issue." Gave it back and issue wasnt fixed.
3. Took it back in and they misdiagnosed it again. Since they determind the HDD was fine, they automatically      assumed it was the logic board and wanted to charge me $500-$600 on the spot to ship it to repair facilities and      have it fixed.
4. A 19 year old kid equipped with Google and Youtube (me) was able to diagnose, confirm, and repair something      in 1.5 hours that they couldnt even correctly diagnose in 4 days of working on it.
5.That "removed excess security titles" thing I mentioned... Yeah all they did was go into my applications and      delete one of my antivirus apps and my battery health app. They said that sometimes viral protection apps can      compete with one another and cause damage. That makes absolutely no sense to me!!
Needless to say, NEVER trust your computers with Geek Squad. They can't even correctly diagnose a faulty WIRE.
Lesson Learned: Always take Apple products to Apple technicians regardless of discounts elsewhere.

Imac 24-inch won't boot - OS disk inside

I have a 24 iMac that will not boot properly, and has the OS disk in the optical drive. I hear the optical drive grunt and spin upon powering up, but nothing more happens, leaving me with a black screen.
The three diagnostic LED's are all green.
The USB keyboard and mouse seem non-responsive and I've had no success at powering on with the mouse button pressed, or using any key stroke combination on startup.
I thought if I could get the OS disk out it might boot. (OS was upgraded to Lion, OS disk is Snow Leapord) Anyone know how to eject a disk without using the keyboard, mouse, or properly booted imac?
Thanks!

Five ways to eject a stuck CD or DVD from the optical drive
Ejecting the stuck disc can usually be done in one of the following ways:
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the left mouse button until the disc ejects.
2. Press the Eject button on your keyboard.
3. Click on the Eject button in the menubar.
4. Press COMMAND-E.
5. If none of the above work try this: Open the Terminal application in your Utilities folder. At the prompt enter or paste the following:
/usr/bin/drutil eject
If this fails then try this:
Boot the computer into Single-user Mode. At the prompt enter the same command as used above. To restart the computer enter "reboot" at the prompt without quotes.
This fifth option will only work if you can boot into single-user mode, but if the OS is badly hosed this won't work. So, you can try getting it to boot from the DVD.
However, it sounds like you may have a hardware failure if the keyboard is unresponsive. Since Lion was installed you can try booting to the Recovery HD:
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.

MBP fell, now won't boot

Title is the short version - long version: Last night my Macbook Pro, turned on but with the lid shut as I was leaving it for the moment, fell about 1.5 to 2 feet to the floor. After getting it to a secure tabletop, I opened it again and found a black screen. No cracks in the screen or dents in the body, but when the black screen persisted I went ahead and restarted it. Probably not the best idea, but nothing was working. On restart, the screen was grey, and took a very long time to reach the flashing question mark folder stage. Tried booting into the hardware check, then tried the install cd disk utility a few times when it became obvious that I could not eject the install disk. That's a secondary problem - I can't retrieve the disk. Could not make it past the blank, grey screen. I've tried booting into single user mode and everything else I could find in the support articles to no avail. My laptop still only turns on to a blank greyish screen and there's a weird chirping noise when it powers on. The nearest Apple store has no appointments available until tomorrow, and I have been trying to find someone who can repair a Mac in my local area with no luck so far. I don't know what else I can try, or what exactly the issue might be, so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Until a complete physical exam is done, you do not know if the damage is only the image of the OS on the disk or broken hardware (cracked logic board, loose connection to HD, etc.)
Go to Genius Bar, get a free estimate to fix damage, if any.
If all but the HD is OK, we can help evaluate OS (re-)installs.
But there are currently too many unknowns.

MacBookPro 13 inch won't boot after last OS update 2 days ago

My MacBookPro automatically installed the latest OS update and after the mandatory reboot now it brings up the initial screen (apple with bar on bottom) and then it goes black just to do the same again and again.

My verbose output:
BSD root: disk0s2, major 14, minor 2
CSRHIDTransitionDriver::start [-v]
CSRHIDTransitionDriver::switchToHCIMode legacy
AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement: initialization complete
USBF: 12.267 AppleUSBHubPort: Port 1 of Hub at 0x7d000000 about to terminate a busy device (IOUSBCompositeDevice) after waiting 10 seconds
USBF: 12.572 CSRHIDTransitionDriver[0x4033680](IOUSBCompositeDevice) GetFullConfigDescriptor(0) returned NULL
CSRHIDTransitionDriver... done
syncing disks... Killing all processes
continuing
done
MACH Reboot
E:[AppleUSBBluetoothHCIController][InterruptReadHandler] Received kIOReturnAborted with 1 pending interrupts
E:[AppleUSBBluetoothHCIController][AbortPipesAndClose] ClearPipeStall failed with error 0xe00002ed.
the state of the device returns 0xe00002ed
CSRUSBBluetoothHCIController::restartShutdownWL request to change tCSRUSBBluetoothHCIController
IOBluetoothHCIController::terminatedWL .. done

MacBook Pro (2011) 13 inch won't boot up

The computer will chime. The screen is grey with the apple logo. There is a status bar below the apple that takes about 5 minutes to get the end. Then the computer shuts down.
I tried the shift, option, command trick...doesn't work.
Also tried option,command, P, R. Doesn't work either.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

digidude101,
do you have the Early 2011 MacBook Pro, or the Late 2011 MacBook Pro? (If you’re not sure, what speed CPU does it have?) Which version of OS X is installed on it?

Brand new Macbook pro 15inch (not Retina) wont boot my MBP 13 inch (2011) HD

Just bought a brand new macbook pro 15 inch, replaced the hdd with my 13 inch hdd and it wont boot. i got a Error msg. (Lion)
- I put the new hdd in the old MBP(13 inch) and it boots fine.
- I put back the old hdd in the MBP(13 inch) and it boots fine.
I figured the hdd wasnt compatable with the 15inch so then i cloned the 13inch hdd onto the 15inch hoping it would work. i still got the error msg.
so now im stuck because the 15inch wont boot from the stock hdd because it has the data from the 13inch. Very frustrating, what could be the logical reason to why it wont boot?

That's correct. The version of Lion you have on your old disk will not boot on the new machine.
What you should have done is make a Time Machine backup of your old drive. You still may be able to buy an enclosure for it and see if you can use Migration Assistant to migrate your apps and data, but I'm not sure that will work (works when an old drive is in another Mac and you transfer via, for instance, Firewire).
So you'll just have to resinatll the correct version of Mountain Lion and then you can TRY to use Migration Asistant to get your data/apps from your old hard drive once it's in an enclosure (again, I'm not sure that it will actually WORK, I've never tried it).
Clinton

MBP 13' Won't boot from CD or external Drive

Recently my MBP 13 (newest version) occasionally crashes with the grey screen death which forces me to hard shut down. This led me to believe my directory may be corrupted so I tried to boot from my external OS X (Snow Leopard) with DiskWarrior installed to do the repair. Unfortunately, when the grey Apple logo shows up, the computer crashes again.
I tried again using original recovery CD to boot hoping to use Disk Utility, but it does the same thing where it crashes at the Apple logo.
I can't seem to figure out why. Anyone have experience with this issue? how do I resolve this issue???!
Thanks

JL9283 wrote:
The external drive is a clone of a different computer.
This could be why it won't boot to it. It may not have the correct drivers to run the 13'. You really should have a clone of each Mac you own. Perfect for trouble shooting this type of thing. You can partition an external to have clones of several different Macs. I do that, plus I clone each to an extra internal on the desktop models.
However, if this have any impact it should've occurred in the past?
I think you just got lucky in the past.
I just spent 2 hrs re-installing OS X again and restoring. It's still doing the same thing. (It appears I can boot from the restore CD, but not external drive).
What install method did you use please?
If you can boot from the DVD, go to disk utility and see what your internal drives S.M.A.R.T. status is. Might as well run a Disk Repair while you are there.
Also, since you can boot from disks,
I would try running the extended version of your Apple Hardware Test.
It's not perfect but may flag something.
I'm assuming you can't boot from your DiskWarrior disk cause it's an older version that won't boot the new 13'?
That's the case for me and my MacBook. Since you can't boot to your bad clone, do you still have another Mac around? If so, you could boot in Target Disk Mode and use Diskwarrior from the other computer to try and repair the 13'.
DALE

MBP won't boot - "GRUB_" - tried installing ubuntu on an external drive

so i tried installing ubuntu netbook remix onto an external drive, and upon restarting my MBP won't boot to my internal HDD, once it displayed "GRUB_" with a blinking cursor, but is otherwise unresponsive.
now i just get the folder with the ? on it.
I've run disk util, repair permission, repair disk and still no luck.
i can boot the MBP into target disk mode and see the HDD on my other system and all appears to be good, and if i boot to the install dvd, the HDD shows up under the "startup disk" menu, but it just doesn't boot.
any thoughts on how to fix this?

So I have an imac that I have had for about 3yrs. About several months ago, it started acting a little strange, it wouldnt pick up the mouse or the keyboard at times even thought they were plugged in properly to the usb port, sometimes both would work sometimes one or the other would work and other times they worked fine. About a month or 2 ago, I went to turn my imac on and it got to the screen where the little circular icon pops up implying it is loading, stayed that way for 2-3min then turned of and turned itself back on and did the same thing, made the apple sound got to the load screen turned of after 2-3min then turned back on, it has been doing that for the past month. What do I do?

MBP won't boot. Gray screen, apple logo.

As above, my 2.4 Macbook Pro, won't boot past the gray Apple logo and that spinning circle.
Holding C doesn't allow it to boot from CD either, for Leopard/Tiger OR Disk Warrior!
Holding alt allows the start up menu, but then spits the CD out and only shows the Macintosh HD which obviously wont boot!
HELP!
MBP 2.4 / 10.5.2

Have you tried zapping the PRAM?
Here's how:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

MBP won't boot recovery USB drive, need help

HDD failed on 15" mid2009 MacBook Pro, purchased a Seagate 1TB hybrid drive (SSHD) to replace it with. Went to boot to USB recovery drive with OS X 10.8 using option/alt on boot and would only get the folder with flashing question mark. Tried command+R also. Tried different USB ports. Tried with HDD pulled out. The USB recovery drive does work because we were able to boot to it from a different MBP, and verified the files on it with Disk Utility. Just can't get any kind of recovery options or anything on this Mac with replaced HDD. Need help. Never encountered anything like this, can't find anything like it online, and none of my coworkers can figure it out. We've all been working comps for yrs, one even an ex apple-tech. Thanks for any suggestions!!

Sorry - missed that part about having used both USB ports...
Since you've verified that the USB thumb drive works on another Mac, and that it won't boot whilst holding down the option key, I would advise taking your machine to an Apple Store or an AASP to have them diagnose your machine (which will be free). They, too, should have USB sticks that they can use to test the machine.
Good luck,
Clinton

MBP - 13 inch won't boot

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