Possibly crashed.... Now flashing folder symbol with question mark.

Hi
I think my iMac crashed tonight. It kept freezing, and i couldnt force quit anything. I restarted, and then none of my programs would open, and i couldnt click on anything. I held in my power button, shut it off and kept it held in. Then a blank white screen came up and stayed there for about 10 minutes. Then a flashing folder with a question mark came up. Im not sure what happened or what to do. Your help is GREATLY appreciated.
Sarah
Message was edited by: Sarah CMac
Just a spelling mistake

First, Try to verify the disk with disk utility found in your install dvd.
The flashing question mark means that the computer can't find a system.
There must be a system error
Unless the hard drive failed, then you should be fine with a reinstall.
(if you hear a clicking sound, then yes, sadly the hard drive is failing.)
Message was edited by: Mad Maxx

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Hi . i have Intel based iMac. i erased whole hard disk. now it flashes folder icon with question mark... i have no internet or orginal dvd.... i want to clean install any mac osx..friend got mac book pro and osx in dmg format . what are my options?

hi . i have Intel based iMac. i erased whole hard disk. now it flashes folder icon with question mark... i have no internet or orginal dvd.... i want to clean install any mac osx..friend got mac book pro and osx in dmg format . what are my options?

On your friend's computer with an internet connection, log into the Mac App Store with your ID and download Yosemite from the Purchases section of the Mac App Store. The make a bootable USB install media using
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After reading through the forums I've found a few discussions and users that have similar problems as me but haven't seen anything that deals directly with my issues.
After upgrading to Leopard last night, it ran sluggishly for about 15 minutes. I got impatient and decided to restart. While trying to restart it froze, so I just shut my powerbook down. When I tried to boot back up I got the "flashing folder icons with question mark", I've since found out that it isn't finding any type of drive to boot off of. I reset the pram, tried to reboot with the same result. Tried to boot up using cmd-s but still got nothing but flashing folders. Booted up from the Leopard install disc to try and do an archive and install and it said it couldn't upgrade because it couldn't find tiger on my machine. So I booted from the Tiger install discs to try and re-install tiger again. Tiger cant find my HD to install on; I'm thinking this may be due to Leopards install. I ran disk utility and it couldn't complete the verifying process. I got this "Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit."
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Chank wrote:
After reading through the forums I've found a few discussions and users that have similar problems as me but haven't seen anything that deals directly with my issues.
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Possibly crashed.... Now flashing folder symbol with question mark.

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