You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Question mark in boot menu

Hi

For some reason my Mac failed and I had to reinstall mac os from online recovery. I first erased my partition to mac os journal then choose reinstall mac, (mountain lion). The recovery downloads the mac for some time, an hour maybe, then boots to a question mark folder. Not really sure about the reason behind this error, could you please help?

TIA

Posted on Jun 17, 2020 6:47 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 18, 2020 12:40 AM

I found a solution for this strange problem. Seems that when I was in the online recovery downloading the OS X the device goes to sleep or restarts after a while, and when I open it later it boots from the start to nowhere, this is why it boots to the question mark.


Could be solved by constantly moving the cursor every 2 minutes during the installation. Not sure why this happened but it's fixed now.

6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 18, 2020 12:40 AM in response to AhMedZzz

I found a solution for this strange problem. Seems that when I was in the online recovery downloading the OS X the device goes to sleep or restarts after a while, and when I open it later it boots from the start to nowhere, this is why it boots to the question mark.


Could be solved by constantly moving the cursor every 2 minutes during the installation. Not sure why this happened but it's fixed now.

Question mark in boot menu

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.