Is the "prohibited" symbol at startup similar to the old "sad mac" icon at startup in that it sees a hard drive, but just cannot find a usable operating system on it? This is on a current model MacBook Pro (non-retina, 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7).
That means something is seriously wrong with the system, and it's preventing the machine from starting up. There's some information about this, as well as troubleshooting techniques, here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1411
Also: Assuming you have Lion, try holding command-r at startup and using Disk Utility to verify/repair your disk.
charlie
I have the same problem. would you think that the solution is to wipe my hard drive?
Please help me...
My mac book air showing prohibited symbol
I want to take my data backup
What does the "prohibited" symbol at startup mean?
