Prohibition sign at startup
I have read all the posts I could find regarding this Prohibition symbol at startup, but found nothing relating to my issue.
I do not have, and have not had any Norton products for a long time, never installed it on the current machine. That rules out that issue.
The problem started after I tried moving 2 files to a different folder (possibly coincidental). The files disappeared, Spotlight could not find them. I started having kernel panics and the prohibition symbol at startup.
Since then, I have reformatted both HD and reinstalled Leopard with all the updates. When I first startup after several hours, the prohibition symbol appears. After I restart it boots normally and seems to run fine. I have repaired both drives without errors and I am now booting from my secondary drive, which should rule out a faulty HD (the former startup HD).
1. Could this be caused by a failing (former primary) HD despite the fact I tested it extensively?
2. Could a failing internal battery be the reason it fails after several idle hours? It puzzles me the time/date are not lost, usually a sign of a failing internal battery.
I recently installed Gimp, the latest Logitech mouse software (3.2), and was running Pathfinder. I now have none of them installed and the problem continues minus the kernel panics. My next try will be to replace the internal battery and disconnect the former main drive. If that fails, I will replace the ATI video card with the original card. Beyond that I don't know what to try.
I should also mention there was a strong power brown out right before this happened. However, I have my Mac connected to a large UPS and the Mac did not blink when the brown out occurred.
Any suggestion is appreciated. Cheers.
G5 Dual 2 GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.8), ATI Radeon X800 XT, 5 GB of RAM