Flashing question mark on folder at start up...help,please

Mine just died yesterday. Macbook less than 6 months old! I had read the issue was with Seagate drives but mine's a 120gb Hitachi so interested to know more about this firmware updater or software updater being the cause?

Plus anyone had any joy removing HD and either recovering data or using an external drive box to stuck it in and retrieve data?

Cheers

I'm here for the same problem tonight (Jan. 5th). I bought my MacBook in June 2006. I try to use Disk Utility to repair drive, but it doesn't recognize my HD. It all started when I was dragging/dropping photos into e-mail and got the beach ball (lasted for over an hour). I started it manually and the blue screen came up - several odd clicks from the computer - then the folder with the question mark.

Is my HD dead? I'm sickened. All my photos of my newborn are on the HD. Any suggestions?

Same here. MacBook about 15 months old and I got the question mark. HD is dead, and can't be recognized in Disk Utility. The Install disk is jammed into the slot. I've put it in Target Disk mode but it will only see the Install disk.

I've got about 85% of my stuff backed up, but this failure on the part of Apple -- and the usual silence from headquarters -- is tear-inducing.

Apple ought to be ashamed of itself: this is outrageous. Of course, we, the customers, will get blamed for the crappy hardware and will be forced to pay hundreds of dollars to their useless "Geniuses."

I took mine to a data recovery center and was willing to fork over the $600 - $2000 they said it would cost if they could get stuff off ... but they said the platters seemed to have gotten scratched (probably in my ever-persistent attempts to get the HD to show up after I got the ? folder.

I have good news - all my data and information is safe and now fully backed-up.

The tech I have been working with was able to get about 90% onto the external hard drive - however once he installed a NEW internal hard drive 100% of the information from the old hard drive migrated over including all the permissions. The permissions were not going to the external hard drive, which is why we installed a new internal hard drive.

Furthermore my old internal drive may still be somewhat functional but has been removed - we started over with a new drive.

Something is terribly wrong with the apple software updates - my tech strongly believes that was the issue with my computer.


I just tried to sync my iDisk and the Apple support site says an update is necessary. I am very hesitant to do the update until I have confidence in apple's software updates... I will just email the information that is not on the iDisk.

Apple still remains silent on all the issues related to the conversations on this string and personally I believe they owe us some answers.

I am relieved to have my computer completely functional - its my fault my data was not backed up but apple bears some responsibility for sending out a what seems to be a faulty update.

Good luck everyone and thanks for your support and suggestions.
Patrick

Add me to this list. I bought my macbook in May 2006. I have not installed any apple updates for at least 5-6 months now, because digidesign does not keep protools up with apple's updates.

Has apple acknowledged all of these failures yet?

sigh...
i have this 3 days ago...
i bought mine last august... only 5 months old... its a seagate.. i ve lost 30Gigs of stuffs... wth...
boring days without a mac... sigh...
im going to the apple store tomorrow...
if they dont change a new one for me im going to burn the store down....
anyway...
will they change the harddisk for me straight away? or they need a few days for inspection?
i cant wait to have my mac back up again...

Looks like I'm in the club. Yaaaay!

To make matters worse, I'm in Bali, Indonesia, and will be in a new country every few weeks for the next five months. All of my expensive software- including photoshop CS3- one of the primary reasons I have this computer with me right now, is back home. I'll be in Tokyo, where there are two Apple stores, next week, but only for a few days. They'd BETTER replace the hard drive on the spot!

Wow. A little worrisome to realize we're in such good company! Yes, of the four Macs in my household, the MacBook purchased in summer of 2006 to go off to college with my daughter is now booting to the question mark screen. First thing we tried was re-seating the hard drive since instructions for doing that on the MacBook are so straightforward.

Next, based on this thread, we tried inserting my iBook G4 OS X CD (can't locate the ones for the MacBook?) and holding down 'C' key while powering up in an attempt to boot to the disk drive. MacBook sounds as though it's trying to read the CD, but ultimately the question mark folder appears once again. Is this the Mac equivalent of Windows' Blue-Screen-Of-Death?

Now, of course, I can't seem to figure out how to remove my OS X CD from the MacBook's disk drive. Any suggestions on that part? Seems like a good idea to remove the CD if it won't boot to it? But how?

me too.
got home to find macbook ? folder flashing.
tried booting from osx disk. won't even do that. why not??
apple. you are a c **.
my cd drive was stuck. keep holding down the option key on bootup and when the cursor appears, press eject. u should be cool then.
grrrr. to this.

Yep same issue here. Bought my Macbook a few weeks before Christmas '07 and it looks like my HDD has crapped the bed. Gray background w/ a folder containing a question mark after a few minutes. Won't boot to system disk or Apple Care disk.

Mine had just run an update to 10.5.2 (I think) yesterday and today when using it it was getting very sluggish. I tried to do a restart, but it hung up. I had to do a hard reset and it never came back to life. I guess I'll be waiting on hold for 2 hours tomorrow....

Unfortunately, I'm also part of this club. Talked to Apple today and was somewhat optimistic as I was sent to a product specialist who had me wait to see what she could do. Unfortunately, after the wait the answer was nothing. This is obviously a known problem and Apple needs to step up to the plate, acknowledge it, and get it fixed.

Message was edited by: Steve97M

This may help somebody. I think my flashing question mark was tied to a problem with external hard drive start-up or removal. I had followed http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58042 and didn't get rid of the flashing question mark. I could tell I still had a good hard disk by accessing it in target mode ( http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583). The PowerBook wasn't getting far enough in its boot sequence that it would start up from the install DVD and it wouldn't come up in Safe Mode, or Single User Mode so I could use fsck. It was clueless as to where to find the OS.

Here's what I ended up doing to recover:

1. Start up in Open Firmware by holding down the Command-Option-O-F keys during restart.
2. Type "setenv boot-device hd:,\System\Library\CoreServices\BootX" (yes, those are back slashes) to tell it explicitly where to boot from.
(For the curious, type "printenv" to see all settings. I'm guessing the first column is current settings and the second column is defaults. "\\:tbxi" means "use the boot file on this volume", which doesn't help if it can't be found.)
3. Type "mac-boot" and if you are successful you will boot into Mac OS.
4. Open System Preferences... and set your Startup Disk.
(If you now shutdown, restart into Open Firmware, and type "printenv", you should see the full name of your boot-device, something like pci2/ata-6@D/@0:3,\\:tbxi.)

Apple just returned my macbook pro from repair (failed hard drive). Apparently, they put in a new HD, new fans, and also installed leopard. I used it for 4 hours and then all the programs froze. I performed a hard shut down and now I am getting the ? folder icon. Is this an OS problem, or do I have the incredible misfortune of having my faulty HD replaced with another faulty HD?

Me TOO!!! I've tried everything that the manual suggests, everything my "Mac-Geek" suggests...I'm going to read through here & see if there's anything new. I wonder if my MacBook has a recessive Windows gene.....