Question mark on stuff

i keep getting a question mark folder whenever i try to use quicktime to watch a video and i can't run updates. i can download a new copy of quicktime + itunes but it won't run either. apparently it's not updating, and it won't let me. it's really frustrating because this poor macbook is my primary computer now. please help!!!!

Try repairing your permissions. Also - (and everyone should do this) download the free Applejack program and install it. Restart your computer, hold down the Command and S keys to boot into single user mode. You'll get a black screen that takes you to Applejack. Type the word applejack and the applejack menu will appear. If you type Applejack AUTO it will do a deep cleaning of your entire hard disk. Will take about ten minutes but well worth it.
Go to Google and type in Applejack Mac and you'll find it. It is free.
"AppleJack is a user friendly troubleshooting assistant for Mac OS X. With AppleJack you can troubleshoot a computer even if you can't load the GUI, or don't have a startup CD handy. AppleJack runs in Single User Mode and is menu-based for ease of use."

Similar Messages

While using safari, all quicktime related stuff revealed as a question mark

just got my new macbook today. i know i have quicktime, but many webpages i have looked show parts of it with a quicktime icon and a question mark. i am sure there is something i need to reconfigure, but i cannot seem to find out where to start.

This setup should enable you to view/hear pretty much everything:
Assuming you already run OS 10.4.9 or above and have Quicktime 7.2, and are using Safari 2 or 3, download and install (or re-install even if you already had them) the latest versions, suitable for your flavor of Mac, of:
RealPlayer from http://uk.real.com/player/
Flip4Mac WMV Player from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx (Windows Media Player for the Mac is no longer supported, even by Microsoft)
Perian from http://perian.org/
Adobe FlashPlayer from http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1ProdVersion=ShockwaveFlash
In Quicktime Preferences, under advanced, UNcheck Enable Flash, and under Mime settings/Miscellananeous only check Quicktime HTML (QHTM).
In Macintosh HD/Library/Quicktime/ delete any files relating to DivX (Perian already has them).
Now repair permissions and restart.
The world should now be your oyster!
You should also have the free VLC Player from http://www.videolan.org/ in your armory, as this plays almost anything that DVD Player might not.

White Macbook has folder with a question mark inside when powered on.

My brother has a white macbook given to him from a friend and when it is powered on it shows a folder icon with a question mark in the inside flashing and it doesn't boot. He has sent me on a quest to get a power adapter and a new hard drive, He thinks the hard drive is fried. Does anyone know for sure if thats the case, I just don't want to buy all that stuff to figure out that the logic board is dead or something else irreplaceable. There is no backup disks, all I have is a replacement leopard disk from apple used for my mac mini.

If it is a retail Leopard disc--black with a giant purple X on it--then yes, you could use them, with a couple of caveats. One, it would technically be a violation of the license to use that install of Leopard on more than one computer, and terms of use on this forum forbid me from encouraging such an action. And two, depending on how old this used MacBook is, your install of Leopard may pre-date manufacture of the MacBook and, as a result, not be able to boot the MacBook anyway. However, judging by the info in your signature, that is probably not a problem.
If the disc for your Mini is gray and shipped with or was meant to ship with the Mini, then no, the disc will not work.
I still encourage you to get the system discs that came with the MacBook originally, as they have the Apple Hardware Test included, and, as I suggested above, running any OS (or other Apple software) on a Mac without the discs means technically it's an unlicensed copy.

MB Pro 13 (2010) BSOD in Boot Camp followed by question mark folder

Hello, good folks of the Apple support communities. Let me describe my problem to you guys and maybe you'll help me figure out what's wrong because I'm at my wit's end.
A couple of months ago, my MBP13 randomly gave me a BSOD after which it refused to load - just gave me a blinking cursor. I was able to narrow that down to a somehow-messed up boot sequence. I was able to fix it from the Windows 7 repair console. I thought that this time around my situation would be similar, but I haven't been that lucky. So, let me paint the picture of what happened this time.
Sitting in my kitchen, laptop on the counter, plugged in, having a conversation on Trillian and Skype. I pick it up and move to another room, sit down and try to continue and for a couple of minutes everything is fine, but then the cursor freezes and I get a BSOD, followed by an illuminated dark screen. All my attempts to resuscitate prove futile - any time I press the power button, all I get is that gray screen. I reset the PRAM and then got the white screen that usually appears when I just power on. Unfortunately, no choices of boot (Mac of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit which I'm running in Boot Camp) - and then the flashing folder with question mark followed. I was 15 minutes away from driving off to the airport, needing to get on a plane, so I grabbed the MBP, the OSX DVD and the Windows DVD and an external hard drive (2.5 inch SATA) and went to the airport. Started reading support forums and narrowed the issue down to potential HD issues. So I tried first to re-seat the drive - no dice. Then I tried booting from the OSX DVD and going to disk utility - the HD was not being recognized. Same story with the Windows 7 DVD. Mid-flight I disassembled the external drive and swapped the two - the external was being picked up, no problem, so I figured it was a hard drive issue, not a motherboard one, say.
So, I'm thinking, great, my HD is fried. I've got a whole bunch of data on it that I wanted to salvage (primarily on the Boot Camp partition), so I swapped the MBP drive into the enclosure and hooked it up to a buddy's laptop. To my surprise, Windows 7 on his Dell picked it up without a problem (only Boot Camp, not the Mac part, but since Mac isn't formatted for Windows that probably shouldn't have been surprising) and after futzing with the permissions, I was able to start backing stuff up - never finished, though, figuring that if it's being picked up, I'd just do it later. But I needed a functioning laptop, so I went to Best Buy and picked up a Momentus XT 500GB, installed it and thought I'd be able to install an OS on it. Nope. Windows never even saw the drive and OSX tried to format it but couldn't allocate memory, according to the report. So back to BB the Seagate went. I am coming back to school tomorrow and should be able to have our IT people look at it, but what do you guys think are my best and worst case scenarios and options here? If the Mac HD is completely toast, why would it get picked up just like that via USB? And if it's not toast, can I somehow still boot it? Or should I just salvage what files I have and bite the bullet with a new HD? And which one, if that's the case, since the Momentus crapped out on me big time (in fairness, I later read about all its problems and realized I was better off without it). Or should I just cut my losses, sell the MBP and find myself another computer, perhaps an ultrabook?
Any thoughts greatly appreciated! Ideally I would like to spend as little as possible while restoring my pre-BSOD situation as much as possible, as you might surmise, so I really don't want to buy a new laptop quite yet...

Thanks for the detailed explanation! If MacBook supports AHCI/SATA only in native “UEFI mode”, while reverting back to PATA/IDE in legacy “BIOS mode”, then it could make perfect sense to use UEFI to make sure that technology like Native Command Queuing (NCQ) is employed, as it may give noticeable performance improvements for certain operations: www.happysysadm.com/2012/12/intel-g530-nas-performance-part-3.html. I wonder how do you get Windows 8 x64 with EFI bootloader installed on MacBook?
Simply choosing EFI Boot (“Some EFI platforms support both UEFI and BIOS firmware. On some of those systems, it is not always clear if the default DVD boot option is an EFI or BIOS boot option. On these systems, using the EFI shell command may be required. If you do not specifically start Windows Setup by using the EFI boot entry, the default firmware boot entry for BIOS may be used. If Windows Setup starts in BIOS mode on a combined EFI/BIOS system, the ESP and MSR partitions are not created.”) from Win8 x64 DVD when installing on blank HDD would yield “The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed" message. Also, if the hard drive was not in SATA mode during Windows installation, registry tweaking may be required before switching from PATA to SATA. Do you do registry tweaking and EFI bootloader configuration manually after a copy of Windows was installed in its dedicated partition in a regular way?

My macbook is getting the question mark folder and also my start up disks are gone

A few weeks back I turned on my macbook and discovered that it cannot boot up anymore. There was absolutely no precedent to this. I didn't drop it (I've dropped it many times in the past if that matters, and may have placed it down on my desk a little to aggressively the night before), and I had no problem using my computer right before going to bed. I just closed it went to sleep and the next morning my computer was malfunctioning. Whenever I turn it on the computer is stuck at a grey screen with a blinking picture of a folder with a question mark on it. I thought my computer was a lost cause and I bought a new one, but now I am in desperate need of recovering my lost files on my old computer which I still have.
So I go to the internet for help, with my goal being to just fix my old macbook or at least salvage the data, and read that the thing to do is press command+R when the computer boots up and fire up internet recovery, then go to disk utility and fix the drive/disc/whatever from there. So I press command+R at start up, and I get past the loading screen with the globe and go to a menu giving me the options of disk utility, time machine, reinstallation, and looking on mac forums for help. I click on disk utility and my mac os x disc does not appear to be on the left hand side. There is one disk under a disk that says Disk1 that says MAC OS X BASE SYSTEM or something to that effect on it, but if you click on its info it says that that particular disc has a total capacity of only 1.39 GB, so that can't be it, right? Also when I click on it it doesn't give me the option to verify or repair it. There's another disk at the very top of the left hand side that says 4.14 GB ST_M13FQ8L M... but it also has a low total capacity.
After I find no help in disk utility I decide to take a different route and see if I have any time machine back ups and it asks me to select the disk that contains the backup I want to restore, but the list that is shown is empty. I don't remember ever setting up a time machine back up so this doesn't surprise me.
So I move on to another solution- to try and reinstall MAC OS X Lion and it takes me to a window where it asks me to select the disc where I want to install MAC OS X Lion, but the the little white box under the message that is supposed to show a list or something of the available selections/discs is completely empty. So I have no start up discs?
Then I click shut down on the upper left hand corner of the screen to turn of my computer and another window appears asking me to select the system i want to use to start up my computer but that box is also completely empty.
I don't know what to do this at this point, and I don't know how to interpret the situation either, even after researching the issue on the internet. Does this mean that my harddrive/disc or whatever is completely gone/broken? And more importantly does this mean that all of my data is gone forever? Or is the system or computer itself broken or something like that, but my hard drive is intact? Now that I have a new computer all I really need is to somehow transfer the data from my broken computer to my new one, and don't really need to "fix" my computer- but if fixing it is the only means to see my data again that's what I want to do. And also can I fix this manually by myself, or does this require professionals. And if i do need to hire someone, how much will this typically cost? Thanks!
Some other facts: The macbook in question (the broken one) is an aluminum 13 inch macbook pro from I think 2012, maybe 2011, and used to run on Mavericks. I also used to have windows bootcamp on it but i rarely used it. The macbook has been having some problems for a while and recently started to slowly break down. The USB ports stopped working completely, all of its apps were slow and glitched a lot, the battery in it was nearly dead (it said REPLACE SOON where the battery symbol used to be on the upper right hand corner of the screen), but it still worked at a base level and I used it for work and stuff, up until this point of course.

This document should give you some leads as to what to do.
A flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac

Black Screen, Grey Screen, then flashing question mark, now frozen....

hi everyone,
i know i have probably the most common problem - and i've tried to read all about the logic board problems which i'm fairly certain i have.
I realize i will most likely have to buy a new macbook - but before i do - i need to retrieve files that are on my ibook g3 (bought in early 2003).
This is what has happened in the past 2 days:
1. I can hear the power start up (and chimes) but screen is completely black.
2. Tried resetting PRAM and PMU, now blank grey screen sometimes appears.
3. Now, grey screen with flashing question mark in the middle alternating with mac face. So i assumed this meant it couldn't locate my hard drive. So i found my ibook install disc and inserted it and restarted while holding down "C" key.
4. Grey screen - with Apple (thought this was success) - then it turned to a large grey circle with a line through it (a slash). And then suddenly frozen.
Since then it has just been a lot of lines through the screen alternating with completely grey screen, etc. along with any of the above-mentioned outcomes. I tried pushing on the lower-left-hand corner of the computer and yes, it affects the display - more or less lines, etc.
How can i get my old files off of it? Do i buy a new macbook and connect them via fire wire cable and try that way? or will that not work if the above is happening? Or is it possible for someone (myself or perhaps IT professionals) to remove the hard drive from my old ibook and place it somewhere where i can copy over the files?
Any help is appreciated - i know this is a popular topic - i've just had so many weird outcomes in the past 2 days i'm not exactly sure which solution (if any) would work for me right now.
Thanks so much!

Hi Ronda -
I do have access to another mac (mini) with firewire at my work. Or I might go out and buy a new macbook this weekend as well (preferable since I don't really want my personal files on my work computer, etc.) But yes, i need to get my old files off of this one.
I have never added additional memory or anything to it really since I got it. So it should be the original specs:
iBook (14.1 LCD 900 MHz 32 VRAM)
256MB memory
Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
Hard drive: 40GB
Not a lot of space was remaining if i recall. I did get the 'disk full' notice a few weeks ago, but i did end up deleting a lot of stuff. Needless to say, i'm sure it was quite full, but not at maximum when this happened.
Update: Last night i tried to start it up again, and it would ONLY go to a black screen this time (ie. no display at all). What do you think i should do?

Since upgrading to Mavericks, 10.9.1, pictures that come attached to emails no longer display. There is only a blank space that after about 1 minute, has a small box with a question mark. How can I go back to attached images?

Since upgrading to Mavericks, 10.9.1, pictures that come attached to emails no longer display. There is only a blank space that after about 1 minute, has a small box with a question mark. Double clicking on the box will open the image in a separate window. It's very slow and tedious for multiple images. How can I go back to attached and displayed images? If I click on "Forward", the images appear instantly in the email to be forwarded.

Scott,
My problem seemed to fix itself. Or, by shutting down the computer one night, instead of putting it to sleep, may have reset something. Since updating to Mavericks, I always (or usually) let the computer sleep overnight or anytime I'm walking away from it. A few days ago, I was updating notes for my kids about how to find all my stuff and how to turn on my computer, so I wanted to rewrite the start-up procedures for the iMac, just in case they ever need to. Well, I shut it down one night so the following morning, I could write down each step. Lo and behold, the images, etc. are all there again! Solved, but I'm not sure why.
Tom

Catalogs, Missing Files, and Question Marks for Beginners

Hello, fellow non-power-users. I just wanted to post something here that I've learned with my travails and travels using LightRoom 3. In the past, Adobe has paid me to write for them, and I'm a professional writer. So why am I doing this for free? Because I wish to heck I'd understood this stuff before I dove into LR. Somehow, even with reading a book on the program, I didn't really get it.
1) Most of the people who are kind enough to post and help on Adobe support and other forums on the Interwebs are power users of Lightroom. The great thing is, they often know what they're talking about. The bad thing is, many of them don't understand what it's like to be a non-power-user who really has no intention of becoming a power user. Be very, very careful before you try to take their advice about any large issue that might have serious consequences for your photos.
2) LR has about forty million ways to do things, so it can be overwhelming, and you may also receive lots of contradictory information about how to accomplish stuff. If you're like me---not a professional photographer, more a refugee from the annoying land of iPhoto who just needs a *little* more power and customization---you may have trouble streamlining, figuring out the few things you actually need the program to do for you. Try some introductory videos and tutorials, even books, but don't expect them to solve your real problems with the program.
3) Before you begin, grasp a few concepts:
     a. When you're working in LR, you're working with a "catalog." It shows you images of your photos, but these aren't really your photos. Your actual photos are *files* that live on your computer somewhere. Think of it as a slideshow projected on a wall: you can see the photos on the wall, but they aren't the "real photo." If you walked up to the wall and painted on the projection of a slide, the "real photo" file would not be changed. What LR does is keep track of those wall paintings for you, so if you wanted to print up a version of that slide and include your brush strokes, LR could do that for you. The catalog is a type of database.
     b. So where are those real photos, those files? Probably all over your computer in different places. You may want to consolidate them all in one place before you start using Lightroom. Here's why: once Lightroom thinks your "real photo" is in a certain place, it doesn't want you to move the "real photo" file. Say you have a photo called that someone sent in email. You put it on your desktop. Now you are tempted to drag-n-drop it onto Lightroom. DO NOT DO IT. Because someday, you might want that photo to not clutter up your desktop. You'll drag it to another folder on your hard drive, and BOOM, now Lightroom cannot find the photo.
You can't work on the photo from within Lightroom. You can't print it. Lightroom will show a question mark ? on its wall-projector slide of your photo file. Often when someone moves files on their computer, it's not a single file on a desktop. It's a bunch of things they are trying to organize. Adobe knows this, which is why they have a "find missing photos" command. They know you are likely to screw this up. The command will show you those missing files. You have to select them individually by hand and search your computer for them to relink. You can spend a lot of time relinking photos. It sucks. Really sucks.
     c. If you do need to move stuff, Lightroom does let you do it, but only from within the program. So, open up LR, and look in the left-hand column for an item called "Folders." (You will be in Library mode to make this happen.) You can move your "real photo" files around from within this area. It is a clunky process and an enormous pain in the butt.
     d. Rant time: For some reason, one of the most sophisticated and long-lived software companies in history, the developers that completely changed the worlds of art, design, photography, and publishing--you got it, Adobe--have not been able to solve this problem and chase down your real photo files if you moved them from within the Finder, the way you normally move files on a computer. Go figure. (Irrelevant note: I've been using their products since Pagemaker 1.0 and it's sort of astonishing that they've never solved this problem, in LR or InDesign or elsewhere. It's like publishing a magazine using Quark in 1995, rushing to find the messed-up links before you hand-carry your ZIP drive over to the printer. Hee hee.)
4) Decide whether you want to divide your photos into a few separate catalogs, or whether you want one enormous catalog ("master catalog"). Then try not to change your mind.
Here is my story:
Summary: I started with multiple catalogs and regret merging them into one.
I hired a photographer/supposedly-LR guy to set up my LR and he suggested multiple catalogs, each easily saveable (catalog AND its photos) to a single external hard drive. I only made two: one for family photos, one for a big art project. Whenever I asked questions online about using LR, everyone told me to combine all photos into one big master catalog. Eventually I did, and I regret it. As a non-power-user, I screwed up something in the merging process, and ended up with a lot of question-mark, missing-photo problems, and a bunch of duplicate photos to boot. What a waste of time.
If you're not a pro, you probably don't need a gigantic single database to deal with. If you're someone who uses Dropbox or another non-Adobe cloud method to store and work with your photos, and you don't have unlimited storage, you may find it way more convenient to have a few different catalogs.
Power users probably don't screw up the process of merging all their catalogs into one. Power users have, from what I've read online, many complicated ways of making a big master catalog work the way they want, say for working on small numbers of files while traveling with a laptop, and then getting that work into the giant master catalog when they get back home to their studios.
But I am not a power user, and if you're reading this, you probably aren't a power user either. So perhaps my experience will be useful to you.
5) Paying for plug-ins to help with all this nonsense.
You can buy plug-ins that help you do things this application should already do by itself. For example, "Duplicate Finder" goes through and finds all the photos that you've accidentally imported more than once into your catalog. Then you can painstakingly go through, figure out which copy to keep, and delete them. Often, these "duplicate" photos are not duplicates of your "real photo" file. But at some point you moved your "real photo" file while you were tidying up your computer files, and later accidentally re-imported that photo into your LR catalog. Since LR doesn't follow your files around when you move them from within your computer/Finder, LR thinks it's a whole brand-new file. It's like your projector is projecting three images on the wall at the same time. You have to figure out which one to keep, which one will save your wall-painting changes, etc. And it is a huge pain in the butt.
Note that you can click a box when importing photos, a box that says "Do not import suspected duplicates." This can be really helpful for avoiding duplicates in the first place. It is not, however, infallible.
OK, I hope this helps someone somewhere. I'm going to go back to the horribly time-consuming task of relinking files and trying to make my brain work the way LR's brain works.

Glad to help!
Another good thing to do from time to time is to boot from your install CD, then choose "Disk Utility", then do a check (and repair, if necessary) of your boot disk.
You can't verify or fix a disk you've started from, thus the need to boot from a CD. You can boot from a second hard disk to do this test if it has MacOS on it.

New Hard Drive: Mac Face/Question Mark on boot

I installed a new hard drive in my fathers iBook G4 1.33 GHz and installed Leopard. I instantly had problems after the installation was complete and the computer restarted. I got the Mac Face/Question Mark for a second and then it booted to the installation CD.
I used disk utilities to verify and repair the disk and permissions which both finished successfully. I tried to reboot with the same result: Mac Face/Question Mark for a second and then it booted to the installation CD. I decided to erase and reinstall Leopard. Installation complete - Restart - Mac Face/Question Mark. I decided to turn if off for the night.
I powered up in the morning with short-lived success, as I got the Leopard Welcome video. I set up the system and did some software updates, which eventually required a restart. Boom. Mac Face/Question Mark. I decided to hold the option key on my next restart to see if I could select the hard drive installation over the install CD. I was able to do so, and it booted fine to the hard drive. I continued my software updating, installed some more software like iLife '08, Firefox, Open Office, Stuffit Expander, etc. After all my installation and updating, the system operates great, except when I have to start up. I still have the Mac Face/Question Mark.
I have a theory that the hard drive jumper is set incorrectly, but I don't want to waste 45 mins. cracking the thing open to find out. Can anyone confirm? I'm open to all other theories, of course.

No jumper means Cable Select (CS). This would mean that the cable from the motherboard to the drive has a blue connector at the motherboard and a black connector on the end where the drive plugs in. The gray connector in the middle is the Slave position. Master/Slave relationship is determined by where on the cable the device is plugged in.
The CS cables and the setting was not used very often until around 2004 or 2005. Until that time all of the connectors on the cable were the same color and the Master/Slave setting was determined by the jumper on the drive.
It's very possible that you are trying to use a drive that's been setup for the newer systems as Cable Select, when actually you should force the drive to be a Master by installing a jumper on the proper pins.
Are there two deviced on the cable besides the motherboard, and are all of the connectors the same color? Or is the connector that plugs into the motherboard black? Then you are probably not looking at a CS buss.

Installed new hard drive and flashing question mark appears

I bought a new hard drive for my macbook pro (mid 2009) because my original harddrive bit the dust... I purchased it off of amazon which states that its specifically for macbooks and the reviews appeared to back it up. I saw a lot of people with great reviews of the same model of macbook that I have so I figured it was the best solution.. I connected the new hard drive but I am getting the dreaded flashing folder/question mark. Is this normal before re-installing the OS x? Heres the problem, I am out of town on business and do not have the original OSx disc on hand. So my question is, is the flashing question mark normal upon installing a new harddrive? and if so, is there away to install the OSx onto the new harddrive without the disc?
my macbook was running mavericks before the harddrive went to poo, however I did try to re-install mavericks before i ultimately realized that I needed to new harddrive. I noticed that rebooting my mac with command+r would give me the option to reinstall mavericks without a disc or anything. the next question I have is, would this still be do-able on the new harddrive? I tried the command+R option on the new harddrive but nothing happens.
Can someone help me out here, I am getting a little desperate as I have gone over a week without my mac and theres so crucial things I need to get done! Luckily I have all my stuff backed up on an external hard drive, I just need to get the mac running again. Thanks for taking time to read!

1. Yes, it is normal. If there's no OS on the drive, there's nothing to take the computer past that point.
2. No, there's no way on that Mac model. You need to use an existing system(see #4).
3. Not on that Mac model; it doesn't have the Internet Recovery system, and there isn't a recovery partition on the new drive.
4. If the backup drive contains a bootable clone of any compatible OS, or a Time Machine backup created from Mac OS X 10.8 or newer, connect it and restart the computer with the Option key held down. If it doesn't contain either, you can't.
(105476)

Persistent Flashing Question Mark Folder Icon, after Repair & Rebuild-THX!

Hello All,
Thank you in advance for any insights.
For the past week, one/two days after a force re-boot, my Quicksilver Mac (OSX 10.4.11 and OS 9 Classic) starts up with the dreaded flashing question mark folder.
The start up disk has always been on "Mac OS X, 10.4.11 on main stuff" ("main stuff" is the name of the hard drive.)
The first time, I ran DiskWarrior and rebuilt the hard drive, which is kind of new as it was replaced in April 2009. Then I ran OnyX and got a clean bill of health. The Mac was shut down at the end of the day as is my habit via turning off the power strip.
If it helps, here's part of the DiskWarrior report:
• 13 files had a directory entry with an incorrect text encoding value that was repaired.
• 340 files had a damaged extended attribute that was repaired.
• 3 folders had a directory entry with an incorrect custom icon flag that was repaired.
• Incorrect values in the Volume Information were repaired.
Disk Information:
Files: 370,719
Folders: 85,161
Free Space: 92.55 GB
Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Block Size: 4 K
Disk Sectors: 268,171,472
Media: WDC WD5000AAKB-00H8A0
The next day, the flashing question mark folder reappeared. This time I used the original system installer CD (labeled Power Mac G4 OS X Install). Disk Utility made its repairs. And this time, the computer was put to sleep instead.
In the morning, it woke up, the wireless optical mouse worked for a few seconds, the hard drive is humming along then all of a sudden the arrow (mouse) froze and none of the keys on the keyboard functioned.
After some research, I deleted the energy saver preference (powermanager.list?) and ran Disk Utility again. And again, I shut down b/c I wasn't going to use the Mac for a day or two.
This afternoon, the pesky icon reappeared at start up. At first Disk Utility didn't see the hard drive then I restarted and the hard drive was selectable though not mounted. It was repaired and verified yet once again. Btw, when I did hard drive test, the message says something to the effect that it appears to be working properly.
My question is, might anyone know what's wrong? I've been backing up after every use and I have a laptop. But I love working on the desktop and if this issue can be fixed, that would be perfect.
As an aside, I've read that I should do a clean install. Would doing a clean install mean I need to re-install OS 9 as well as all other all other software programs-Adobe Creative Suite, Quickbooks, Verizon DSL, printer drivers etc.?
One final question, can I continue to boot up from the CD, repair then restart or will I damage the computer? Once it restart, everything seems to work normally and well.
Many, many thanks for reading and any help would be greatly appreciated!
Have a wonderful weekend.
Sam

Disk damage can also affect the startup sequence, but I think what you have already done should have repaired any disk damage, or given you more information.
Once you have ruled out Disk damage, you get the flashing question mark when your Mac cannot find:
• the preferred operating System
• of the preferred version
• on the preferred startup drive.
All these items are stored in the parameter RAM, backed up by a 3.6 volt, non-recharging 1/2-AA size battery that lasts three years or so, unless you turn off all power at night.
If you cannot remember when you last changed that battery, now is a good time. Be sure to reset the PMU/PRAM after installing the new battery.
Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder

Locally stored embedded QT movie (.mov) won't play (question mark icon)

Hello. I have the same problem on two different computers, both running Firefox 3.0.4 and Quicktime 7.5.5. In a web page with a quicktime movie embedded using the <object> element, if the page refers to a file on a local drive (for example, within the same folder as the html file), it will not display. I see the Quicktime logo with a question mark in it, sometimes after a fleeting glimpse of the video. If I put the same video in a remote location and change the data attribute to point to that remote URL, the file works as it should. I haven't noticed any problems playing Quicktime files on the web, in general (but I haven't looked around too much). The same code (with the movie file in a local folder) works fine in Internet Explorer, and I tested on a third machine with Firefox 2.0.0.2 and Quicktime 6.3, and it worked there. Any ideas? Thank you.

Well, thanks, that might explain it. So the reason I can simply click on the local file to open it in my browser and it invokes the Quicktime player just fine is because it's not an http request? And this might be a boneheaded question, but aren't most media files invoked on websites local to the html files in which they're embedded and referenced with a relative URL (like /media/movie.mov)? Or is it that because those files are residing on a server, the relative URL is translated into an absolute URL when a client submits an HTTP request?
I guess I'll look around at existing web pages that use the object element to call up media files and see how it's done (and if they work in my browser). Also, I'm new to this stuff, so sorry if my questions aren't making sense.

Macbook has the folder with flashing question mark

Yesterday as I was watching Netflix my Mac froze. I was skipping around an episode and then started opening a folder to do something else while it loaded and then it just froze. I thought maybe I was clicking on too many things at once or whatever and it got screwed up a bit so I closed it for a minute or two. When I opened it back up it had a (light) blue screen that wouldn't go away so I shut it down with the power button. Then when I turned it back it just had a white/gray screen for like a minute before the folder with the flashing question marked appeared.
I've googled possible solutions but nothing seems to work. It won't boot up in safemode. One answer suggested trying to do comm-opt-P-R (can't remember what that was trying to do) and that didn't work. The screen would just go black and then start up over and over. When I just press the opt-key it takes me straight to Internet recovery. However, none of the options available work. I don't have the TimeMachine thing, I don't have a disk to reload the Lion software, and there's nothing to click on at all in the disk utility. All that's available in that is a disk0 and the Mac OS X Base System and I can't click on First Aid/Erase/Partition/Restore. I've opened up the startup disk and there's nothing that shows up.
Is there something else I can try at home or should I just go ahead to the apple store? My Mac is under a year old still, but I spilled soda on it back in like October and had to get all the parts replaced so I don't know if that would do anything to the warranty....And if something does have to get replaced will I lose all my stuff? It was bad enough losing four months worth of data, I don't want to lose seven.
Thanks for any help.

As long as the parts were replaced by someone authorized to do the repairs, you should still be fine. This error indicates that they computer isn't able to find a disk to boot to.
The "disk" to reload Lion is that internet recovery (also can be launched from command + r).
Seeing as how you don't have the startupdisk in Disk Utility, I would recommend getting it into a store to see why that drive isn't detected. It could be something as simple as a loose SATA cable, or as catastrophic as complete hard drive failure. While you're at the store, I'd look into investing in an external drive to start running Time Machine...

Repeatedly getting question marks on my dock apps...

I'm not moving or deleting anything, but a bunch of my dock's apps keep getting question marks on 'em and I have to go find the app and make a new shortcut. This happens on both our MacBook (OS 10.5.6) and our old G4 running OS 10.4.11. Each computer just has one user account set up.
This is slowly driving us crazy. Help!!?? I've searched and search on the support pages and can't find anything on this except stuff that says I must have deleted the apps, etc.
Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Howdy Ferd II,
Nope, not using anything to modify dock...and not using any non-apple maintenance or utilities. Not aware of any cache cleaning utilities either. I'm not savvy enough to have set up any of that.
The apps are usually MS Office apps and Adobe apps (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat). My Quicken app has done it too. Oh, and my Canon ImageBrowser. Those are all the apps I use the most, so pretty much everything.
Except, iTunes has never done it...I use that a lot. And Safari....Can't remember if Safari has ever done it.
All of the above is referring to the laptop, but the desktop computer is pretty bare bones, too. No mods other than basic system with a few apps installed. We mostly use Safari, an older Photoshop, and MS office on it. Same kind of behavior. Never with iTunes, though!
When I got the laptop a year ago, I thought I'd not have this issue that I'd been dealing with on the desktop machine. Then when it started happening on the laptop, I figured there'd be other people chiming in that this happens to THEM too, but so far none of that......! So it is a puzzlement.
E.

Japanese, Question Marks, Locales, Eclipse, and Windows XP ????

Hello. I am having some issues localizing JSP to Japanese. I have read a lot of stuff on the topic. I have my .properties file in unicode with native2ascii, etc.
When I debug under Eclipse 3.0, I see the Japanese characters correctly displayed in my properties file and inside of strings internal to to the program. However, when I try to print them with a System.out.println, I get question marks (??????).
My reading tells me that the ???? indicate that the characters cannot be displayed. I am somewhat confused because in the same Eclipse context I can clearly see the Japanese characters in the debugging window.
Thus I am missing the part where I set my standard output to correctly display the characters like Eclipse is displaying them in windows other than the "Console" window.
My default encoding is CP1252. If I do something like:
out = new java.io.PrintStream(System.out, true, "UTF-8");
and print my unicoded resource from the bundle I get the UTF-8 character representation (��������������������������). With System.out.println I get ?????
My first reaction would be that the Japanese fonts aren't on my system, but clearly they are as I can see them in other windows.
When I try to show a Japanese resource on the web page that is the result of the jsp file I get ????. I can display the same characters UTF-8 encoded in a php page.
Here is another example:
java.util.Locale[] locales = { new java.util.Locale("en", "US"), new java.util.Locale("ja","JP"), new java.util.Locale("es", "ES"),
new java.util.Locale("it", "IT") };
for (int x=0; x< locales.length; ++x) {
String displayLanguage = locales[x].getDisplayLanguage(locales[x]);
System.out.println(locales[x].toString() + ": " + displayLanguage);
displays:
en_US: English
ja_JP: ???
es_ES: espa�ol
it_IT: italiano
instead of the correct Japanese characters.
What's the secret?
Thanks.
-- Gary

What do you want to do exactly? 1. Making a window application? 2. Making a console application? 3. Making a JSP webpage?
1. If it's window application, there's nothing to worry about if you use Swing. But if you use AWT, it's time to switch to Swing.
2. If you're making console application, solution does exist as others had pointed out but you'd better forget it because no console in whatever platform supports Unicode (Linux xterm may be an exception? But it probably has font problem). So, even if you could display characters in your computer, the solution isn't universal. You can't ask your every user to switch system locale, install whatever font in order to display a few characters!!
3. If you're making JSP, I'd advise you to use UTF-8 in webpages. Most browsers nowadays (probably more than 90%) could support UTF-8. All you need is to add the following JSP headers to your every page:
<%@ page contentType="text/html;charset=utf-8" %>
<%@ page pageEncoding="iso-8859-1" %>Now, your every out.println(s); will send the correct data to browser without the least effort from you. All conversions are automatic!
However, just to make things even surer, you could add this HTML meta header:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">You use Tomcat, right? I do, and I don't have any problem.
Last words:
But, if all you want to do with System.out.println is for debugging, you could use
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "your string here");But you'd better have Java 5, or at least 1.4.2, if you want to have everything displayed correctly.

Question mark on stuff

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