Mac problem - flashing question mark? will not boot up

[WideGlide]

Quick question..... just tried to turn my Mac on, and instead of getting the
little smiling face while it's booting up, I get a picture of a floppy disc
with a flashing question mark over it.... and it remains this way. Turned
it off and tried to restart it about 5 times, same thing every time. Can
anyone give me any insight as to what is going on here? Computer has been
running fine for months, and I have not altered anything at all in a very
long time. There is really no reason for anything to not be working
correctly, unless there was some sudden failure. Please don't tell me that
my hard drive just died. Any help appreciated. wg

[Stephen Boyke]

in article , WideGlide at
wrote on 3/11/04 5:41 PM:

> Quick question..... just tried to turn my Mac on, and instead of getting the
> little smiling face while it's booting up, I get a picture of a floppy disc
> with a flashing question mark over it.... and it remains this way. Turned
> it off and tried to restart it about 5 times, same thing every time. Can
> anyone give me any insight as to what is going on here? Computer has been
> running fine for months, and I have not altered anything at all in a very
> long time. There is really no reason for anything to not be working
> correctly, unless there was some sudden failure. Please don't tell me that
> my hard drive just died. Any help appreciated. wg
>
>

Try holding the option, command and shift keys down at the same time and
restart. If that doesn't work, stick your Mac startup CD in the CD drive
and restart while holding the c key down.
--
Stephen T. Boyke

[WideGlide]

<< Try holding the option, command and shift keys down at the same time and
restart. If that doesn't work, stick your Mac startup CD in the CD drive
and restart while holding the c key down. Stephen T. Boyke >>
-----------------

Thanks. I did try all those things, and still no luck. I took a look at
the rear side of the computer and it appeared that all cables were fully
inserted. But then, for the heck of it, while the computer was on (with the
flashing question mark still on the screen), I jiggled the keyboard and
trackball cables... still nothing... I then removed and reseated the
keyboard and trackball cables, and suddenly I heard the sound of the hard
drive booting up... looked up at the screen to see the computer booting up
as normal. Well... not sure why that happened, but I sure am glad that it
finally started up. This never happened before. So you mean a poor
keyboard cable connection will cause a computer to be totally disabled?
This is a first for me. Thanks.

[Richard Crowley]

"WideGlide" wrote ...
> Quick question..... just tried to turn my Mac on, and instead of getting
the
> little smiling face while it's booting up, I get a picture of a floppy
disc
> with a flashing question mark over it.... and it remains this way. Turned
> it off and tried to restart it about 5 times, same thing every time. Can
> anyone give me any insight as to what is going on here? Computer has been
> running fine for months, and I have not altered anything at all in a very
> long time. There is really no reason for anything to not be working
> correctly, unless there was some sudden failure. Please don't tell me
that
> my hard drive just died. Any help appreciated. wg

Buy a PC

(turnabout is fair play! :-)

[Don Cooper]

WideGlide wrote:

> Thanks. I did try all those things, and still no luck. I took a look at
> the rear side of the computer and it appeared that all cables were fully
> inserted. But then, for the heck of it, while the computer was on (with the
> flashing question mark still on the screen), I jiggled the keyboard and
> trackball cables... still nothing... I then removed and reseated the
> keyboard and trackball cables, and suddenly I heard the sound of the hard
> drive booting up... looked up at the screen to see the computer booting up
> as normal. Well... not sure why that happened, but I sure am glad that it
> finally started up. This never happened before. So you mean a poor
> keyboard cable connection will cause a computer to be totally disabled?
> This is a first for me. Thanks.


This same thing happened to me this morning. A first for me as well, and
I've owned Macs since 1995.

I wish I'd had a little more patience, because after a while, I
initialized the HD, some of which hadn't been backed up.

I should have waited and tried other things first.


Don

[Eric K. Weber]

At least a PC's Bios would have reported keyboard error..... and the
problem would have been obvious...

Rgds:
Eric

"Richard Crowley" > wrote in message
...
> "WideGlide" wrote ...
> > Quick question..... just tried to turn my Mac on, and instead of getting
> the
> > little smiling face while it's booting up, I get a picture of a floppy
> disc
> > with a flashing question mark over it.... and it remains this way.
Turned
> > it off and tried to restart it about 5 times, same thing every time.
Can
> > anyone give me any insight as to what is going on here? Computer has
been
> > running fine for months, and I have not altered anything at all in a
very
> > long time. There is really no reason for anything to not be working
> > correctly, unless there was some sudden failure. Please don't tell me
> that
> > my hard drive just died. Any help appreciated. wg
>
> Buy a PC
>
> (turnabout is fair play! :-)
>
>

[hank alrich]

WideGlide wrote:

> This never happened before. So you mean a poor
> keyboard cable connection will cause a computer to be totally disabled?

The flashing ? mark means it can't find a drive with a valid operating
system. Make sure your Startup Disk control panel is still set to the
drive from which you've been booting. And make sure you have up to date
backups for whatever data you would unappreciate losing that is on the
drive in question.

The reseating of kybd and other cables and the successful boot might be
coincidental. You might also want to rreseat the connector to the drive
with the OS on it.

--
ha

[hank alrich]

Don Cooper wrote:

> This same thing happened to me this morning. A first for me as well, and
> I've owned Macs since 1995.

> I wish I'd had a little more patience, because after a while, I
> initialized the HD, some of which hadn't been backed up.

> I should have waited and tried other things first.

You can always (for some value of "always") boot from your OS install
CD, backup your stuff while running from it, and then rinse, wipe, and
reinstall.

Most of my Macs have more than one partition or drive housing a bootable
OS, so I can usually get around a boot failure on the primary drive by
aiming it at one of the others.

--
ha

[hank alrich]

Eric K. Weber wrote:

> At least a PC's Bios would have reported keyboard error..... and the
> problem would have been obvious...

You assume the kybd action and the problem solving are not merely
coincidental.

--
ha

Bill Gates has $46 billion and he still can't afford to fix Windows

[Mark Steven Brooks]

<< my hard drive just died. Any help appreciated. wg>>

<<Buy a PC >>

The poor guy has enough problems already.



(Mark Steven Brooks/Elaterium Music)

[Don Cooper]

hank alrich wrote:

> You can always (for some value of "always") boot from your OS install
> CD, backup your stuff while running from it, and then rinse, wipe, and
> reinstall.

What's weird is that it only recognized the CD. The HD wouldn't mount at
all. I was going to so a "clean install", saving old stuff that I wanted
to. It wouldn't let me, since there was no HD to install to.


Don

[Don Cooper]

hank alrich wrote:

> You assume the kybd action and the problem solving are not merely
> coincidental.


I'm thinking it was. At least it worked out for him. Me, I lost a lot of stuff.

And no, I'm not buying a Windows machine. Macs are PC's, BTW.


Don

[david]

In article >, WideGlide
> wrote:

> But then, for the heck of it, while the computer was on (with the
> flashing question mark still on the screen), I jiggled the keyboard and
> trackball cables... still nothing... I then removed and reseated the
> keyboard and trackball cables, and suddenly I heard the sound of the hard
> drive booting up... looked up at the screen to see the computer booting up
> as normal. Well... not sure why that happened, but I sure am glad that it
> finally started up. This never happened before. So you mean a poor
> keyboard cable connection will cause a computer to be totally disabled?
> This is a first for me. Thanks.


Na, the keyboard being plugged in wouldn't have anything to do with it.
Maybe you waited longer without shutting it off while fooling around
with the cables in the back and it finally gave your hard drive enough
time to get going.

If I were you, I would run Disk First Aid or Norton or DiskWarrior cuz
the problem had something to do with your boot drive. It could be a
System software thang or a hardware glitch.

Last, sometimes this can happen if you shut off your Mac the wrong way
- namely a hardware shut off instead of shutting down via the finder
menu item.




David Correia
Celebration Sound
Warren, Rhode Island


www.CelebrationSound.com

[Garrett Cox]

You really need a copy of Disk Warrior. It's 75 dollars or something
like that. HFS+ has some issues. I'm not sure it's really inherant to
the filesystem but Apples do this. Basically the drive is fragmented.
Bits of data are just scattered all about the hard drive in no order.
Which is normal except that it gets to a certain point and it can't
find things. (this is in basic terms. there's quite a bit more to it
but you probably don't care) Disk Warrior will repair the filesystem
corruption and should give you back if nothing else a mountable drive.
You may wish to back up the data and format. Always a good thing to
do.

Oh. Well if the drive is clicking and sounds like someone dropping a
ping pong ball... Well thats not good. Or if you were unfortunate
enough to get one of the bad IBM deskstar drive (aka deathstar).

there's always www.drivesavers.com they rock too.


garrett


"WideGlide" > wrote in message >...
> Quick question..... just tried to turn my Mac on, and instead of getting the
> little smiling face while it's booting up, I get a picture of a floppy disc
> with a flashing question mark over it.... and it remains this way. Turned
> it off and tried to restart it about 5 times, same thing every time. Can
> anyone give me any insight as to what is going on here? Computer has been
> running fine for months, and I have not altered anything at all in a very
> long time. There is really no reason for anything to not be working
> correctly, unless there was some sudden failure. Please don't tell me that
> my hard drive just died. Any help appreciated. wg

[Scott Dorsey]

In article >,
WideGlide > wrote:
>Quick question..... just tried to turn my Mac on, and instead of getting the
>little smiling face while it's booting up, I get a picture of a floppy disc
>with a flashing question mark over it.... and it remains this way. Turned
>it off and tried to restart it about 5 times, same thing every time. Can
>anyone give me any insight as to what is going on here? Computer has been
>running fine for months, and I have not altered anything at all in a very
>long time. There is really no reason for anything to not be working
>correctly, unless there was some sudden failure. Please don't tell me that
>my hard drive just died. Any help appreciated. wg

It can't find the hard drive.

This could be a bad hard drive, or a bad cable, or something else bad on
the SCSI buss screwing it up. It could even be a bad controller, though
that's the least likely of the set. Do you hear the drive spinning up and
does it sound like it normally does? Have you been hearing a warbling sound
with a lot of sidebands from the drive recently?
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Ty Ford]

In Article >, "WideGlide"
> wrote:
><< Try holding the option, command and shift keys down at the same time and
>restart. If that doesn't work, stick your Mac startup CD in the CD drive
>and restart while holding the c key down. Stephen T. Boyke >>
>-----------------
>
>Thanks. I did try all those things, and still no luck. I took a look at
>the rear side of the computer and it appeared that all cables were fully
>inserted. But then, for the heck of it, while the computer was on (with the
>flashing question mark still on the screen), I jiggled the keyboard and
>trackball cables... still nothing... I then removed and reseated the
>keyboard and trackball cables, and suddenly I heard the sound of the hard
>drive booting up... looked up at the screen to see the computer booting up
>as normal. Well... not sure why that happened, but I sure am glad that it
>finally started up. This never happened before. So you mean a poor
>keyboard cable connection will cause a computer to be totally disabled?
>This is a first for me. Thanks.


Thanks for the nailbiting drama and glad to hear you got it back online. :)
I hate when that happens.

BTW, I had a chance to fire up the G5 for an 002 session sevreal days ago.
I (along with others) had mentioned computer noises coming out of the (in my
case Digi 002) analog ports.

A new power supply was installed. Although I didn't have time to do a
thourough check, the balanced monitor outputs that had been polluted were
free of computer monkey noise. More later.

The Apple unbalanced analog audio out on the tower was still noisey.

Regards,

Ty Ford



For Ty Ford V/O demos, audio services and equipment reviews,
click on http://www.jagunet.com/~tford

[hank alrich]

Garrett Cox wrote:

> You really need a copy of Disk Warrior.

What he said, Macsters; DW is one wonderful app, a butt saver, a welcome
maintenance tool, and worth multiples of its purchase cost.

--
ha

[George]

In article >,
"WideGlide" > wrote:

> << Try holding the option, command and shift keys down at the same time and
> restart. If that doesn't work, stick your Mac startup CD in the CD drive
> and restart while holding the c key down. Stephen T. Boyke >>
> -----------------
>
> Thanks. I did try all those things, and still no luck. I took a look at
> the rear side of the computer and it appeared that all cables were fully
> inserted. But then, for the heck of it, while the computer was on (with the
> flashing question mark still on the screen), I jiggled the keyboard and
> trackball cables... still nothing... I then removed and reseated the
> keyboard and trackball cables, and suddenly I heard the sound of the hard
> drive booting up... looked up at the screen to see the computer booting up
> as normal. Well... not sure why that happened, but I sure am glad that it
> finally started up. This never happened before. So you mean a poor
> keyboard cable connection will cause a computer to be totally disabled?
> This is a first for me. Thanks.
>
>

You mac cannot find its os to boot to
you need to reinstal your operating system(start up disc)
all the files you had should still be there unless you reformat
consult Mac Help from thecomputers at your public library
this is common for people who have multiple os (8.2,9.2,10.1,10.3) on
thier system and push too many buttons too fast or shut down improperly
George

[Mirek]

1) Boot up your machine from your Mac OS CD-ROM startup disk.

2) Locate and open the "Utilities" folder on your OS CD-ROM

3) Inside of that folder you will find the "Drive Setup" program.

4) Double-click on the "Drive Setup" program. Once it opens, it will
show you a list of all available SCSI devices on your machine. It
will certainly show your CD-ROM drive, and hopefully, you will also
see your missing Hard Drive in that list.

If you can see your "Mac OS", "Mac HD", or whatever your named your
MIA drive in the list of available SCSI devices, click on it's name
and highlight it.

5) With the name of your HD higlighted, open the "Functions" menu.

6) Select and click on the "Update Driver"

Maybe all that is wrong is that your driver is corrupted ... Be
careful, so you don't initialize/format your drive by accident. Try
this ... maybe it will revive your drive ... This will help if your
missing HD uses Apple Drivers, if not ... this will not work ...

As others suggested already, make sure you remove all external and
internal devices other than the stock drives that came with your Mac,
since one or more of your non-stock SCSI devices may not be properly
terminated and hang the SCSI chain ...

Good luck,

Mirek



"WideGlide" > wrote in message >...
> Quick question..... just tried to turn my Mac on, and instead of getting the
> little smiling face while it's booting up, I get a picture of a floppy disc
> with a flashing question mark over it.... and it remains this way. Turned
> it off and tried to restart it about 5 times, same thing every time. Can
> anyone give me any insight as to what is going on here? Computer has been
> running fine for months, and I have not altered anything at all in a very
> long time. There is really no reason for anything to not be working
> correctly, unless there was some sudden failure. Please don't tell me that
> my hard drive just died. Any help appreciated. wg

[Don Cooper]

Mirek wrote:

> 5) With the name of your HD higlighted, open the "Functions" menu.
>
> 6) Select and click on the "Update Driver"
>
> Maybe all that is wrong is that your driver is corrupted ... Be
> careful, so you don't initialize/format your drive by accident. Try
> this ... maybe it will revive your drive ... This will help if your
> missing HD uses Apple Drivers, if not ... this will not work ...


It's too late for me this time, because I selected "initialize". I have
updated the driver in the past, however. Is the "update driver" choice
available if the HD is not mounting?


Don

[Michael Dines]

WideGlide > wrote:

> << Try holding the option, command and shift keys down at the same time and
> restart. If that doesn't work, stick your Mac startup CD in the CD drive
> and restart while holding the c key down. Stephen T. Boyke >>
> -----------------
>
> Thanks. I did try all those things, and still no luck. I took a look at
> the rear side of the computer and it appeared that all cables were fully
> inserted. But then, for the heck of it, while the computer was on (with the
> flashing question mark still on the screen), I jiggled the keyboard and
> trackball cables... still nothing... I then removed and reseated the
> keyboard and trackball cables, and suddenly I heard the sound of the hard
> drive booting up... looked up at the screen to see the computer booting up
> as normal. Well... not sure why that happened, but I sure am glad that it
> finally started up. This never happened before. So you mean a poor
> keyboard cable connection will cause a computer to be totally disabled?
> This is a first for me. Thanks.

Without knowing the model, age or OS of your Mac ... some models get
very finicky about booting up if the PRAM battery is dead. What date and
time is your Mac now showing?

Even if date and time are correct, it may be worthwhile having a spare
PRAM battery in case it happens again. Then, while you're floundering
around inside pushing home HD cables etc (that's the technique that
works for me) you can change the battery at the same time.

[David Collins]

In article >,
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

> Have you been hearing a warbling sound
> with a lot of sidebands from the drive recently?
> --scott

Man, I thought I was the only one....

DC

--
Dave Collins Entropy just isn't what it used to be!


www.collinsaudio.com

[Pete]

I've had this problem before.
Sometimes the hard disk connecting plugs need to be reseated.
Just pull out the power and data plugs from the hard drive and replug them.
This cured the problem for me.
Make sure power is off beforehand.
Pete Bird.

WideGlide wrote:
> Quick question..... just tried to turn my Mac on, and instead of getting the
> little smiling face while it's booting up, I get a picture of a floppy disc
> with a flashing question mark over it.... and it remains this way. Turned
> it off and tried to restart it about 5 times, same thing every time. Can
> anyone give me any insight as to what is going on here? Computer has been
> running fine for months, and I have not altered anything at all in a very
> long time. There is really no reason for anything to not be working
> correctly, unless there was some sudden failure. Please don't tell me that
> my hard drive just died. Any help appreciated. wg
>
>

[hank alrich]

David Collins wrote:

> (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

> > Have you been hearing a warbling sound
> > with a lot of sidebands from the drive recently?

> Man, I thought I was the only one...

Maybe you guys need to turn the big dial in the middle of your
receivers.

--
ha

[Mirek]

If the drive was initialized/formatted with Apple Drivers, updating
them would have probably done the trick and would have allowed you to,
at least, mount that drive and back up all your valuable data ...
Incidentally, there is another nifty little program in the Utilities
folder called "Disk First Aid". No, it isn't Norton, but you would be
surprised how effective it is in resolving a lot of problems with HDs.

Mirek

> It's too late for me this time, because I selected "initialize". I have
> updated the driver in the past, however. Is the "update driver" choice
> available if the HD is not mounting?
>
>
> Don

[Don Cooper]

Mirek wrote:

> If the drive was initialized/formatted with Apple Drivers, updating
> them would have probably done the trick and would have allowed you to,
> at least, mount that drive and back up all your valuable data ...
> Incidentally, there is another nifty little program in the Utilities
> folder called "Disk First Aid". No, it isn't Norton, but you would be
> surprised how effective it is in resolving a lot of problems with HDs.


Live and learn. I'm familiar with Disk First Aid, but the it wouldn't
recognize the HD either.


Thanks again,

Don

[EggHd]

I have had this happen a few times over the years on my powerbook (G3 333) but
it will always boot with either the system disc or Norton and be back online in
a sec.

Kinda unexplained.


---------------------------------------
"I know enough to know I don't know enough"

[Don Cooper]

EggHd wrote:

> I have had this happen a few times over the years on my powerbook (G3 333) but
> it will always boot with either the system disc or Norton and be back online in
> a sec.
>
> Kinda unexplained.


After I booted from the CD, I should have removed the CD tried again to
boot normally.


Don