Won't boot from anything and shows flashing ? and Finder/Folder icon

What do I do to fix this? Thank you guys!

I'm trying to help but your answers and the information you've given isn't clear at all. If the answers to these questions weren't necessary I wouldn't ask them. If you're trying to boot with an older OS it won't work and that's not a hardware issue.
Yes, you have a hardware issue but since you don't want to supply any information neither I or anyone else can help you troubleshoot it.
Good luck.
John

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Macbook Pro 15" won't boot from ANYTHING :( Can't mount internal drive

Hi there,
I'm new to these forums so please bear with me if I make a faux pas.
A few days ago while watching a movie on my MBP Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5 the beach ball of death appeared and the computer became unresponsive. I restarted to the flashing folder with a question mark.
Tried to boot from the install disk - No joy : Occasionally gets to the language selection screen (after a good 5-8 minute wait) and then instantly and completely freezes. Cursor won't move, caps lock light is unresponsive etc..
Tried to boot from Diskwarrior - Similar to the above. Long wait, boots to the Diskwarrior 'setting up' screen, unresponsive cursor - despite, Diskwarrior seemingly going through the motions (status in text changes, menu bar appears) and then it reports an unexpected error with code 60, 2105 and completely freezes.
Can't boot from a USB flash drive with a clean version of OS X made from my install disk.
Disk won't mount when in target disk mode. However the DVD drive mounts it's contents onto the host machine when it target mode.
I removed the drive last night and placed it in an external enclosure and OS X reports "The disk you've inserted is not recognised et.. "Initialise" "Ignore" "Eject". The drive appears in Disk Utility but all options are greyed out, SMART status says 'not supported' and it's capacity is shown as 0 bytes. The drive registers in the Hardware pane of Diskwarrior but no-where else.
I'm fine with the fact that the drive has failed but could these problems indicate something more serious? I'm concerned that the machine won't boot from any device or media. Is this a symptom of a failed hard drive or could this be a logic board issue?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!!!
Thanks all and Happy new Year.
XOXO

You might try a PRAM reset and see if this does any good.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379?viewlocale=en_US
It sounds like the hard drive itself is toast based on how it looks in an enclosure. So you won't be able to boot from it. Possibly after a PRAM reset you could option boot to a disc or to your external drive.
I had the experience of a failed hard drive totally messing up my PowerMacG4, and it took some doing to get it going again. I finally got it going again, and it has been working ever since without issue.
The MBP is a different machine, but having experienced first hand what a dying hard drive could do, I think it's well worth doing any resets you can.
If no joy, make an appointment at the genius bar and ask them if they can run a hardware test from their store feed. If you do have other issues, they should show up then.
If you end up being able to boot to the optical drive, you could try running the extended version of the Apple Hardware test yourself.
Good luck!

Xserve G4 Won't boot from Anything

Everyone:
I have a G4 Xserve (slot load) with 2 GB of RAM installed. It was running X.3.9 just as happy as a lark. I migrated all users from the server to use it as a test environment. My first test was to upgrade it to Tiger, which so far has not gone very smoothly.
The Xserve has all 4 bays populated. Bays 1&2 are mirrored using Apple's RAID software, this is the system drive. Bays 3&4 are set as a RAID 0.
My Upgrade goes like this: I inserted the Tiger Server CD (no DVD drive), double-clicked the installer and the server rebooted. The installed seemed to go smooth, but I did have to walk away from it towards the end. When I came back, the server was stuck at a blue screen and a moveable mouse pointer. Couldn't do anything else.
This forced a hard reset, of which the same thing happened. So I thought, no big deal, let's just redo the installation. Insert Tiger CD again, hold down C key....server boots from hard drive and gets stuck.
Weird.
Ok, let's try booting from the Panther CD. Reboot server, hold down mouse button, eject Tiger CD, insert Panther CD, reboot, hold C key....server boots from hard drive and gets stuck.
Dang. This was supposed to be an easy upgrade.
Just so things aren't confused, I pull out the drives with the Raid 0 (Bays 3 & 4). Same process.
OK, maybe it's the Raid on the system drive, so I pull out one of the drives. Same boot process.
Reset the PRAM, just for grins, no change.
Alright, let's see if I can force it to recognize the CD, pull out all the drives and put in a spare, brand new drive from the shelf.
Same thing, won't boot from CD. Neither Panther or Tiger. At least I get the blinking icon that there's no OS installed.
Put the #1 system drive back in, connect an external firewire CD Drive, still won't boot from CD. I still get to a blank blue screen, though.
Try booting in Single User Mode, I still get the same thing, boots from disk to blue screen.
Now I've spent an afternoon of my time and another techs time and we're both scratching our heads. I recalled that I could also issue boot commands via the Sys ID button. Dig out manual, find the combination, same story. Boots from hard drive to the blue screen and stops.
Seems like any input at boot time is being ignored, although it will eject the CD if the mouse is held down. I've verified that the machine is not locked (the light is off). I also opened it up to make sure that the lock switch wasn't partially stuck. Not sure if there's anything else to check.
Thoughts?

does that mean I have to send it to Apple to fix
No. Apple changes the bootROMs from model to model so you can't use the same install disc on different models. It could their way of dealing with piracy.
Example; Say I bought a new MacBook Pro and I had an iMac that was still running Leopard. I couldn't use the Snow Leopard install disc from the new MBP to install SL on the iMac.
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27" iMac won't boot from anything BUT the main drive

Hi all,
My lovely 27" iMac is in perfect working condition, but I thought I'd try to install a OS on a large SD card to see if I would gain any speed.
In the process of doing that (cause I never got that far) I discover that the iMac won't boot from the original install DVD. It simply spits out the DVD when I try to insert into the drive. I'v managed to make an image of the DVD (in a different mac) onto the SD card in order to try an boot from that. No luck. I've tried to insert a original install DVD from my Mac Pro into the iMac, which it reads fine and well, and when I tap the restart button it restarts, but stop with a white screen doing boot up.
If I try to hold down the option key during startup, the iMac WILL let me choose which OS to boot from, but if I choose anything else than the OS already installed it freezes.
I've even tried to boot my Mac Pro from the iMac install DVD - no problems.
I've even run a hardware test on the iMac - no problems.
I am running out of options fast! Please help a devoted Mac-friend.
Take care.
Peter

I WAS using the DVD that came with the machine, but I fear Apple may have sent me the wrong one?
In trying to solve the issues I'd tried other OS disc's (A Mac Pro install DVD and a OS X Leopard DVD) - but none of them would even boot, nor install of my iMac. I always end up with a white screen during boot up.
As I described, the original iMac install DVD would indeed boot my Mac Pro, do the disc seems ok?

MBP won't boot from anything!

Hi I've got a Macbook Pro that was working fine until it froze up yesterday. When I turned it back on, I was greeted with the flashing folder with the question mark. After zapping the PRAM and all that mojo, there was no difference. If I try booting off an external drive, it shows up but doesn't actually start booting. I also can't get it to boot off any of my Leopard discs. Of course, that goes without saying the internal drive doesn't show up as a boot option either. Any ideas? I've troubleshooted a number of Macs but haven't seen one unable to boot anything before...

Hi Chris Jansen;
It sounds like you lost your hard drive. It is possible with the lose of the hard drive for a Mac to not be able to boot from the DVD either. My suggestion is to take it back to the Apple Store and have them check it out. Hopefully you have backups of your data.
Allan

After attempting secure erase, iMac w/homemade fusion drive won't boot from *anything*

2009 iMac with homemade fusion drive (SSD installed in optical bay). Was working fine with Yosemite until I attempted to secure erase it before giving away the machine.
Now the drive is borked. Disk utility could make no sense of it, can't reformat, it can't repartition it. And now it has completely stopped booting. I cannot even get it to boot of an external USB drive anymore (the original operation was performed while booted from a Yosemite installer drive on a USB stick).
I've reset the PRAM, reset the SMC, and just nothing. All boots are attempted from internal messed up fusion drive, which eventually ends in the "prohibitory sign".
I'm not even sure what to try at this point. Any suggestions out there?

Thank you for the reply. I have since resolved the problem, although not in the most satisfactory way.
Here's what I did:
Pulled both drives out of the iMac, put them into a USB dock, and reformatted each one. Both drives appeared at this point to be fine.
Reinstalled both drive into the iMac, and started up from a USB drive. No problem.
Recreated the fusion drive from the terminal. No problem.
Now, because I am a glutton for punishment, I tried wiping the fusion drive again. This time, part way in, it kernel panicked. Luckily, I was able to reboot once again to the external drive.
At this point, the fusion drive was in the exact same messed up state as when I started. Disk Utility app could do nothing with it.
Fortunately, this time I went right to the command line, and was able to fix things up and recreate the fusion drive before anything else bad happened.
I gave up on wiping the drive for now. If I need to do so in the future, I will disable the fusion drive and try to wipe each physical drive separately.
I should note that this iMac has never given a spot of trouble before now, so I am highly suspicious of the way disk utility tries to wipe a fusion drive. I certainly won't try it again. (I don't know if it has ever kernel-panicked before in the 5 years I've owned it).

G4 (10.4.11) won't boot from disk and won't safe boot

I lost the items from the bottom half of my finder sidebar list on my G4 running under 10.4.11. The instructions to correct this problem that I found include safe booting (holding down shift after startup tone). However, this just doesn't happen (left with spinning gear for minutes). I tried to boot from two different disks (DiskWarrior and Apple's Hardware Test - holding down C at startup), but with the same result... a spinning gear.
I can still boot the computer as normal and it still works, but there is obviously something not right.
Anyone recognise these peculiarities?
Thanks,
Lee

Lee:
I always shut down my Mac when not in use and some times I will restart when an application slows down. When you load applications they most always require restart. When the monitor freezes on some glitch the first maintenance recommended is to restart or shut down for a couple of minutes. Your Mac will respond much better. sometimes to many application may be open at once. I sometimes forget that I've opened an application and forget to close it. Keep it lean and plenty of free disk space on your OS Volume (hard drive) for Virtual Memory your Mac uses it often for temp storage. I have two backup Firewire hard drives that I keep most important data. I try to keep all applications on my OS Volume and only data that I use every day and I always backup when I complete my up date.
Dick. D
Message was edited by: Dick Deaton

Won't boot from anything

I was suspecting HDD failure, despite the lack of any audible evidence of that. But now I'm leaning towards the dreaded logic board failure of some component, resulting in board replacement. Here's the history.
I rebooted my MacBook Pro after installation of something to /System/, which always requires reboot obviously. It got stuck between the kernel load screen(apple logo and gear) and the progress screen. Basically I see a blue screen and it goes no further. fsck from SUM resulted in repair of file miscounts, reboot gave same symptom and no further damage can be found ever since.
So, dead HDD right, nope. The drive mounts as a target disc, hence how I also ruled out what I installed to /System/. I also get the exact same result from optical discs, internal drive and external LaCie FW drive, whether it's Apple media, TechTool Pro, Service diagnostics, burned OS X DVD's, Linux LiveCD's.
So next step is obviously Verbose mode, but I'm not really sure how to read that. If you need me to post Verbose output, let me know how much of the output I need to jot down and post. Other than that, any ideas?

Just tried it twice booting from the internal. Along the lines I see two or three things that say failed but it keeps moving and other things succeed. Eventually it exits verbose mode on its own and goes to the plain blue screen. I get a movable pointer but it never gets passed the blue screen.

My PB G4 won't boot from any hard drive..stucked in apple icon..

At first, it didn't boot from the internal hard drive...
I could see the apple icon with grey background, but the little runing icon under apple icon didn't appear. There is no sound from the hard drive either...
I tried removing and replacing the RAM, didn't work either...
I have the powerbook CD with apple hardware test, I ran it. It went though a detail test and showed no errors or problems....
And then I tried to start up from the powerbook CD, it works and I was able to go to disk utility. However, I cannot complete verifying disk permission because of a lot of problem, sometimes it said "communication error with disk manager" and sometimes it got frozen and sometimes it just simply stop moving (not frozen, but just not moving, the disk is quite also too).
then I tried to boot from my USB external hard drive, I had my backup in it. However, it is the same as booting from internal drive, no running icon below the apple icon. Also, the external hard drive did not make any sound.
I have never experienced this problem... please help...

Have you added any hardware or new software recently?
Have you tried a safe boot? Hold the shift key while you boot - this does some disk maintenance and doesn't load login items. If this works, try booting normally.
If you can't run Disk Utility verify permissions from the OS X CD did you also try to verify or repair the disk? If this won't work due to errors, you may want to consider a program like Disk Warrior to attempt to repair the hard drive. You can find it at http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

2012 Macbook Pro won't boot from CD and freezes in single user mode

I'm rebuilding a macbook pro. Everyting was fine until I tried to install Snow Leopard from the disk. It goes to the Apple symbol no spinning wheel and you can hear the drive working for a few seconds but then stops. I've also tried booting to sinlge user mode but it just freezes after Loading System\Library\Caches\com.apple.kext.cahces\Startup\Extensions.
I've tried resetting the PRAM as well.

If you have a 2012 MacBook Pro, you can't install Snow Leopard because it's not compatible, so it's normal that you can't start OS X.
Now, you have to install OS X Lion or Mountain Lion again. Hold Command, Option (Alt) and R keys while your Mac is starting to start into OS X Recovery, and reinstall OS X. After reinstalling OS X, you will be able to use your computer.
You can't run an older OS X version than the one that came with your computer, because of some reasons:
1. The hardware isn't compatible.
2. The firmware restricts the installation of older versions on the computer.
3. It's illegal: Apple doesn't allow you to install an older OS X version than the one that came with your computer, and it doesn't mind the method you use (a "normal" installation or a virtual machine)

I have a 2012 Mini with a fusion drive that won't boot from a usb cloned drive. It came with 10.8.2 pre installed. I have zapped the PRAM and reset the SMC. Any thoughts?

I have a 2012 Mini with a fusion drive that won't boot from a usb cloned drive. It came with 10.8.2 pre installed. I have zapped the PRAM and reset the SMC. Any thoughts?

When I tried using a recently downloaded (from the App store) version of MtLion 10.8.2 (12C60) I could NOT get the new MacMini to install or boot from a USB I had previously made. I was however able to use the Recovery Mode of the MacMini to create a bootable SSD which I had installed. The problem arose when I went back into Recovery DU as it saw the seperate drives (SSD & HD) as a broken Fusion Drive. Interestingly DU from the boot volume had NO issues and reported NO faults. It was the Recovery DU that identified the faulty Fusion Drive configuration. At this point I am definately out of my depth but my speculation is that the Recovery Volume is being used in some fashion to form the method or pattern that DU assigns files to the drives, System Report sees the drives as seperate volumes with all their individual characteristics.
Disk Utility did not make a bootable USB, I don't have or use CCC or Super Duper.
Here is the longer version I've been compiling:
Having bought a late 2012 Mac Mini(6,2) i7 2.66GHZ with the standard 1TB 5400 HD and 4GB of RAM (base model) I immediately decided to install a Mercury Elite 6g 240GB SSD and up the RAM to 16GB. I received both shipments on the same day and had all my new toys in front of me. After following the video advice on OWC’s website for the installation of the second drive I started the mini and formatted the SSD to accept the OS from Recovery on the original HD. This MacMini shipped with 10.8.2 (12C2034) as the OS, the normal build of 10.8.2 is (12C60). Having used Recovery Disk Utility to format the SSD it came back with an error that DU could’t Repair. I went ahead and installed the OS on the SSD and the Mini booted normally from both drives. The issue I encountered with this setup was that iMovie encountered an “unexpected error” and would not save a completed project. I therefore decided to figure the drive issue out because I suspect the new Fusion File Management software didn’t like my configuration with drives that Recovery DU saw as needing to be “fixed”. After spending some time on the phone with both OWC and Apple Support I took the plunge and used Internet Recovery Disk Utility and allowed both drives to be “fixed” after which DU created a Fusion Drive (Logical Drive) that I then ran Repair Disk on and it showed up as a single drive in DU. It works perfectly as described by Apple’s site:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5446
Having checked the Link Speed and Negotiated Speed they both show as 6g so I’m pleased not to have lost performance due to it being fuzed to a 3g 5400 drive. The biggest drawback is that Apple’s Fusion Management only allows for 1 additional partition and I would have preferred more than that.
I have sourced some additional information here:
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.macsales.com/15619-special-note-for-adding-an-ssd-to-a-2012-mac-mini ?
http://blog.fosketts.net/2011/08/05/undocumented-corestorage-commands/
If anyone has a factory Fusion Drive could you please post the Link and Negotiated Speeds of both drives? This information can be found in Apple > About This Mac > More Info… > System Report > Serial ATA and the drives should show up as discrete drives with their info listed separately.

Hi guys I'm really in need of some help. I have an IMac I3 for a while now I've been having a problem of my machine refusing it shut down , it goes to a blue screen with a spinning wheel but doesn't shut down. And now won't boot from install DvD

Please some one help me ...
A) my mac won't shut down with external HD connected (if it's been used)
B) there are disk permissions that can't be fixed SUID stuff ..
C) I have now verified the Mac HD and it tells me it's corrupt in bold red writing and to start up from install DVD
D) it won't boot from DVD so I cannot run the repair , initially the machine was spitting it out on start up , now it appears to be attempting to boot off DVD , well it sounds like it is .... BUT it's hanging with the Mac Logo and a wheel ... For um .... 30min now...
E) weirdly when OSX is booted off the hard drive , it won't recognise the Install DvD or the applications one... It just spits them out....
I had an old PPC 17" and it was a beaut .... Never had a single problem with it ...
I bought this one December 2010 and it's been nothing but issues for a computer in excess of £1000 I'm extremely disappointed ... And weirdly the shutting down issue started when it was a week out of warrantee ... I feel conned and am almost at the point of throwing it at a wall and buying a PC

Ok so I've done what you said and this is what it's come back ....
I don't know that these are the errors , but they're the things which don't look right ...
Throughout the shut down there is a recurring line ;
It says ;
Com.apple.launchd 1 0x100600e70.anonymous.unmount 301 PID still valid
Then there are 2 more which I think are related ;
Com.apple.securityd 29 PID job has I overstayed its welcome , forcing removal.
Then the same with fseventd 48 and diskarbitrationd 13
Oh and on Launchd1 : System : stray anonymous job at shut down : PID 301 PPID13 PGID 13 unmount...
Then the last process says "about to call: reboot (RB_AUTOBOOT).
Continuing...
And stops ...
Hope this means something to you ... Thanks again for your help so far :-)

Blue and White G3 won't boot from CDrom

I am trying to boot the G3 from the CDrom, but it won't seem to work. I have tried different bootable CDs, but it won't boot from any of them.
I have tried a few different things including holding C down and going into openfirmware and trying boot cd @ 0:2,\\:tbxi, and the CDrom does get access, but after about 45 seconds or so, it just boots into OSX. I have also reset the PRAM too.
Now I have added an extra IDE drive to the machine, so does that change the syntax of boot cd command in openfirmware? If so what does it change it too?
This machine has been upgraded to 10.4.6 if that matters.
Also I can access all of the drives and manipulate files with no problems at all, so all of the drives are working correctly.
Mac OS X (10.4.6)

On my B&W I have to boot into OS9.2.2 first, then boot from the CD from there. Fortunately I have the old 6 gig hard-drive set up as all OS9.2.2.

K8M Neo-V won't boot from hard drive after BIOS flash

But it boots just fine from CD or floppy.
I bought the combo (MB, AMD64 processor, 1G memory) to replace a
motherboard which had died in a previously working system. At the
same time I replaced the power supply and the video card. When I first
fired it up, it brought up the boot manager from the previous incarnation
of the system, which had been an Athlon-XP.
I never actually let it reboot, since I wanted to redo the OS optimized
for the AMD64 (and the new video card.) I flashed the motherboard to the
most current version of the BIOS (AMI version 3.5), booted from CD and
installed the OS. Once I got to the point of being able to boot from the
new system, I removed the CD and proceeded to reboot.
It displayed all the possible boot devices (note that the floppy and CD
were empty):
Searching for Boot Record from floppy..not found
Searching for Boot Record from CD/DVD..not found
Searching for Boot Record from IDE-0..not found
No matter what I did, I couldn't get the system to boot from the hard
drive. I reflashed the BIOS back to 3.2, still didn't work. Since then I
have installed four different operating systems: Win2k, WinXP, Gentoo
Linux and Debian Linux. All boot from CD, install perfectly until you get
to the part where the system has to boot on its own, and then nothing.
Has anyone seen this? Is it possible that there is a problem with how
I've set the BIOS up? Or a hardware conflict with something else? Or
just a bad MB?
Thanks for any advice.
Steve

Notihng special in the BIOS drive setup. Everything is auto-detected and I've pretty much left those settings alone. At the time of the first flash I probably *did* have SMART enabled. Once I started having trouble I turned that off, and have never turned it back on.
Boot order has been changed multiple times. Right now it is floppy -> cd -> ide-0. I've turned the network boot option off and on again (not that there's a boot server handy...) I've tried hitting F11 to choose my boot device and specifically selected the HD. Hasn't made any difference.
I generally turn virus protection off the moment I get a new motherboard. I'm pretty sure it came disbaled by default, if not I'm sure I disabled it. Even had it been on, though, any boot block corruption would have to be permanent damage to act like it has, since four subsequent OS installs should have overwritten the boot block four times over.
It might be worth my time to drop a different HD in the primary master slot and see if it can boot from that. I'll be real unhappy if I've toasted a perfectly good drive.

IMac G5 iSight, flashing question mark, won't boot from CD

iMac G5 iSight, flashing question mark, won't boot from CD

Your hard drive has probably died. The ? means that the machine can't find any drive to boot to.

Won't boot from anything and shows flashing ? and Finder/Folder icon

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