Q: iMac flashing files with interrogation mark on startup
I have a mid 2011 27 inch iMac and I normally leave it open during the day and suspend activity at night. However, yesterday I came to use it and the screen was frozen and the fan was working really hard ( Can say this by the sound it was doing ). I was force to shutdown with the power button and restart it. Then, the mac was loading to reopen and it did the same thing again, fan started working really hard and the loading froze. I wait for almost an hour and nothing happened so I was force to shut it down again. Then, at this moment when I restart their was a flashing files with an interrogation mark on it, which means from further search that it's a problem with the system software ( If a flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac - Apple Support ). I tried starting with recovery and it didn't work. I tried internet recovery and my wifi never showed up in the list but my neighbours wifi did ( my wifi was working I was using it on my iPhone. ) Now I'm downloading yosemite to clean install it but I'm not even sure I'm going to be able to do that since every time I launch the computer it ends up showing the flashing files with the interrogation mark.
Everything was working fine before that.
Please I need guidance from this point !
Thanks a lot,
Etienne
iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)
Posted on Aug 17, 2015 8:21 AM
By interrogation mark, I believe you mean a question (?) mark. This means the computer cannot find the startup volume. Attempt to reset the PRAM per iMac SMC and PRAM reset. If that does not work then restart in the Recovery Mode (Command + R at startup) and open Disk Utility and run Repair Disk 2-3 times. If errors appear after the 2-3rd time, the HD has crashed and needs to be replaced.
Please post back with what you found.
Posted on Aug 17, 2015 8:30 AM