Q: What does the "prohibited" symbol at startup mean?

Is the "prohibited" symbol at startup similar to the old "sad mac" icon at startup in that it sees a hard drive, but just cannot find a usable operating system on it? This is on a current model MacBook Pro (non-retina, 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7).

Posted on Jul 13, 2012 8:12 AM

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Q: What does the "prohibited" symbol at startup mean?

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by thomas_r.,

thomas_r. Jul 13, 2012 8:15 AM in response to JasonM
Level 7 (30,944 points)

Mac OS X

Jul 13, 2012 8:15 AM in response to JasonM

That means something is seriously wrong with the system, and it's preventing the machine from starting up. There's some information about this, as well as troubleshooting techniques, here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1411
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by CT,

CT Jul 13, 2012 8:18 AM in response to JasonM
Level 6 (17,882 points)

Notebooks

Jul 13, 2012 8:18 AM in response to JasonM

Also: Assuming you have Lion, try holding command-r at startup and using Disk Utility to verify/repair your disk.

charlie
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by Jlawsonblum,

Jlawsonblum Jul 18, 2015 1:29 PM in response to CT
Level 1 (0 points)

Jul 18, 2015 1:29 PM in response to CT

I have the same problem. would you think that the solution is to wipe my hard drive?
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Q: What does the "prohibited" symbol at startup mean?

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by thomas_r.,

by CT,

by Jlawsonblum,

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