You either have a severely corrupted directory, or a physical hard drive failure. For the former, boot to your Restore CD and Repair Permissions, failing that, Disk Warrior. For the later, a new hard drive.
I am having the same problem with my MacBook. ? With a folder and no hard drive. Apparently alot of people are having the same issue. Just from scanning some replies I noticed that no one really gets the problem. One, you can't repair permissions from the boot disc if the internal hard drive has no reconizable accses point. Two, you cannot run disc warrior from a boot DVD! When you run the boot DVD, disc utility finds no hard drive, so there are no premissions to repair. Seeing i started to experience this today, and so are a few people, there must be a problem with the most recent software update. Or... Dare I say... A mac virus? I dont know anythig about viruses so that's just speculation. But to see the same problem happen all at one to so many people makes me raise an eye brow or two.im just glad I have an iPhone. Otherwise I'd be screwed! If anyone has any answers please let me know. If anyone else is experiencing the same problem please post and let people know!
have you tried booting a different machine on it in target disk mode? or maybe even just seeing if it is available as a target disk. that might be able to tell you if the hd is completely gone.
you did say you could boot but only from a restore disk? which will not recognize you hd? that to me means failed hard drive for sure. might be time to take it in for some good ole apple care.
sorry I should have been more specific. Yes I have tried all of the above and nothing has worked. The hard drive is done. However it makes me wonder because there are a few people on The boards who are having this same problem at the exact time. Any thoughts?
my apple care is expired. I am very sad. I am Hoping that
the new update fried it. I am hoping for a way to get it fixed for free! Any ideas?
I am having the SAME issue. I did a scan to see if there was any harware issue and it came up clean, so I have to think it is software related. I, however, did not do the updates that were sent, so I don't think it's that. I have been messing with this thing since yesterday afternoon (when it went down on me) I was in the middle of IMing and surfing a website, nothing out of the ordinary, and I got the spinning wheel and it froze. I held down the power button to reboot, and BAM! there it went. I was unable to force quit any apps, so I had to do a hard reboot. I really don't want to pay $100 for Diskwarrior, and judging from the posts, it may be a poor investment anyway. I tried reinstalling using the disks sent with the comp and nothing. There is no destination disk to write to and the disk utility does not work. I have alot of important stuff that I need on this comp and need a way to recover it. Please, please, please...someone must have an idea?
I have a Mac Book Pro running 10.4.1 April 5th.I opened itunes and was informed of new updates. I said ok and proceeded until it locked up on the final update which said it was 105 MB security update. I had to force a restart. Only the blue screen came up. Finally, after literally ten minutes, it started. I ran Tech Tools from my Apple Care and everything passed the test. Everything seemed to run fine. I had to reboot today because it froze when it went to sleep. Today I noticed the blinking question mark when I restarted and took a very long time to start.
I just ran the verify disk and it says in red "volume header needs minor repair" and Macintosh HD Error: "the underlying task reported failure on exit" and HFS volume checked:"volume needs repair" Now what? Help appreciated.
The disk will not mount, hence my earlier suggestion to use Disk Warrior, which can sometimes recognize and mount a disk that cannot be mounted in Disk Utility. All of the users here may still be able to recover their data if they can option boot to a known good operating system and work on the disk. Since I am sure many of you have your data backed up, booting from the restore cd and erasing and installing will probably resurrect the drives, especially those doing updates that failed. I cannot rule out hard ware failures, but things to look for are unusual clicking and whirring noises.
I am having a similar problem with my macbook. I booted the macbook up recently and the flashing question mark over the system folder was all I could see.I then rebooted with the Install discs and using DU was unable to repair the disc although the startup volume was visible, the repair option was not. I then rebooted with Tech Tools Pro and was still unable to repair the start up volume. Is the HD dead? I have backed up the HD recently and am considering reinstalling of system software. Is there any point or do I need a new HD.
just went through airport security. Upon sitting back down, I opened sleeping Macbook. It was frozen after waking up. After restart, blinking folder! Aaaaah. I'm heading to Orlando for a conference with no discs to troubleshoot. And I need my laptop.
Anyone heard whether something is going on or are all these April 2008 Macbook issues random?
This happened to me the other night before I had a huge paper due. I tried to restore using the Leopard install DVD and the backups from my external hard drive, but the computer basically sat there for 8 hours and did nothing. Took it to the Apple store the next day, and it wouldn't even start up.
It's a hard drive issue. The genius at the bar couldn't get his hard drive or the Leopard install disk to show up until he took my hard drive out completely. Mine failed, and I had to have a new one installed.
Just an FYI, if you do go the Apple store route: $271 for parts (80gb hd) and labor if you don't have Applecare.
It happened to me a few weeks ago, and it turned out to be a head crash, which means the hard drive head came into physical contact with the platter, digging gouges into the platter surface. Data recovery is almost hopeless in these cases, though I don't know if it is the same as yours.
You might want to look at the hard drive model. If it's a Seagate with a firmware 7.01, you've got the same problem. Do you get clicking noises at startup along with the blinking folder?
I solved my problem (thank goodness) by holding down the power button on my Macbook for 15 seconds. About 10-12 seconds in, it made a loud chiming noise. Then it restarted - no folder with a question mark. It's been fine ever since. Weird.
