White screen with flashing file with ?

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White screen with flashing file with ?

had trouble with iMac not booting up. Read disk and did the hold the D down at start up. fixed the problem for about 30min. then got the gray screne that said I needed to shut down and restart my iMac. Did as told now have a white screen with blinking file with ? on it.

new to mac not sure what OS X I have.

Please help, thanks

iMac, home

Posted on Apr 23, 2010 9:01 PM

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Answer 1

macbig

Level 4

1,680 points

Apr 24, 2010 2:35 AM in response to Texasmac5

That blinking ? is telling you your Mac cannot find a start up drive. Do you have the install disk that came with your Mac?
Also, please post more system info.

Message was edited by: macbig

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Answer 2

Texasmac5 Author

Level 1

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Apr 24, 2010 5:26 PM in response to Texasmac5

Thanks for your help ok I got more infor off my iMac

It is
iMac5,1
OS X 10-6.3 but I put snow leopard on it
2.16 GHZ intel Core
16B 667 HHZ DDR2 SDRAM

The problem started about two weeks ago but I have been away from home to try to fix it. My son has informed my that you can be working on the computer when screen becomes shadded over then that message in a large squar come up that saids You need to turn off your computer by holding the button till all turns off the push the button again to turn it back on.

I have done this and that when the white screen with the blinking file with ?. If you turn off the computer for a few hours it might start back up but some times you just get a white screen like it is trying to log on but never does. you just have to turn the computer off again.

When it does come back up it works great for about an hour then the same thing happens again.

please tell me it something simple

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Answer 3

macbig

Level 4

1,680 points

Apr 24, 2010 10:35 PM in response to Texasmac5

I hope so, but I will need to know if you can start up from the Snow Leopard Disk that you used for the upgrade. If you can do that we can run some tests to try to isolate your problem. Insert the disk in the DVD/CD drive and hold down the "C" key while you restart the mac (make sure you continue to hold down that key until the mac starts up). Let me know if you can do that.

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