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All replies
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Helpful answers
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Jun 15, 2011 11:50 AM in response to gnvhby J D Knight III,Hello gnvh,
The flashing folder and ? is an indicator that the computer is not seeing a compatible System Folder to boot from.
Do you have access to the discs that came with the system? One should have diagnostic software on it. These discs are model specific and not interchangeable.
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Jun 16, 2011 5:27 AM in response to J D Knight IIIby gnvh,Thanks for the reply,
Unfortunately I do not have the discs, but one thing I did try was booting to a linux live cd.
The problem is that when I reboot with the option key pressed startup manager freezes before I can do anything. I only get the clock cursor, a circlular arrow button on the left, and a right arrow button on the right and then it freezes. Is there a way to boot to a CD without going to startup manager?
When I power on the PC I don't even see a bios screen or anything. I just have a black screen and hear the apple ding. I don't know anything about the booting process of a Mac.
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Jun 16, 2011 7:48 AM in response to gnvhby J D Knight III,★HelpfulMake sure nothing is attached to the system except for the power cord.
Boot into single-user mode and perform a fsck repair attempt. Detailed instructions at Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck
If you get it to boot into single-user mode and encounter freezing try resetting the PMU, then retry fsck.
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Jun 16, 2011 8:18 AM in response to J D Knight IIIby gnvh,The powerbook is at home so I'll give it a shot tonight and add comments tomorrow. Thanks for help so far!
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Jun 17, 2011 4:06 AM in response to gnvhby gnvh,Following the links I tried:
Safe booting - I got the flashing folder again
booting into single user - I got the flashing folder again.
Tried reseting the NVRAM - After doing this I didn't get the flashing folder but just a blank grey screen
Tried reseting the PMU: according to my model (12 inch 1.5 DVI)
"Reset the power manager by simultaneously pressing and then releasing Shift-Control-Option-Power on the keyboard. Do not press the fn (Function) key while using this combination of keystrokes."
- After doing this I didn't get the flashing folder but just a blank grey screen. I waited a few minutes and the flashing folder came back and it eventually froze.
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Jun 17, 2011 5:57 AM in response to gnvhby Texas Mac Man,Look at A flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58042
Cheers, Tom
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Jun 17, 2011 8:36 AM in response to Texas Mac Manby gnvh,Uh yeah, I have been all over that link- which I thought it would have been obvious from my previous post. I'm going to see if I can borrow someone's OSX disc to see if I can boot to it by holding the C key. Apart from this, what else can I do to troubleshoot this further or at least identify if this is a hardware or software problem?
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Jun 17, 2011 10:39 AM in response to gnvhby J D Knight III,If you startup the system and immediately hold down the Option key what do you see? If you see a window to enter a password, then the system has a Firmware Lock turned on.
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Jun 20, 2011 9:09 PM in response to J D Knight IIIby gnvh,Ok I finally got a leopard disc. I can boot to the CD, but when I try to verify the disc I get "Invalid B-tree node size". And if I try to do an install at the "select a destination" prompt there are no discs displayed. How can I be sure my HDD is really dead?
As of right now Apple's support site is down/throwing errors ("We can't find the page you're looking for.") when I try to view articles so I can't try the fsck procedure at this moment.
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Jun 21, 2011 11:31 AM in response to gnvhby J D Knight III,Use Disk Utility on the Leopard disc and run a Repair. Select the physical drive (top item) not the logical drive (sub-item).
