How to fix Flashing Folder with Question Mark on Mac

I had this issue today morning while installing 10.10.3 and this is was I did.

1) I forced shut down the mac by pressing and holding the power button.

2) I booted the machine in recovery mode. (for those who dont know, you have to press and hold the command+R buttons and then press and hold the power button till your machine starts OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support)

3) Once the machine booted in the recover mode, You'll be presented with options like restore from time machine, reinstall OSX, etc.

4) Now click the apple logo on the top left. There will be an option called "Startup Disk".

5) Click it, it'll open a window showing available hard drives

6) Select the hard drive in which the OS is installed and click the restart button.

Your machine should boot up (atleast it booted up for me)

Hope this helps.

That folder with the question mark icon means that the MacBook can't find the boot directory. That can either mean it can't find the hard drive or the Operating System data on the hard drive is somehow corrupted.

With 10.4, 10.5 or 10.6 put your install DVD into the optical drive (CD/DVD drive) and reboot. Be sure to either use the disc that came with your Mac, or, if you installed a later Mac OS X version from disc, use the newer disc. As soon as you hear the boot chime, hold down the "c" key on your keyboard (or the Option Key until the Install Disk shows up) until the apple shows up. That will force your MacBook to boot from the install DVD in the optical drive.

Or if you are running 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion or 10.9 Mavericks, boot from the recovery partition (Command +R on boot) and use Disk Utility to repair your OS 10.7 or 10.8 partition.

When it does start up, you'll see a panel asking you to choose your language. Choose your language and press the Return key on your keyboard once. It will then present you with an Installation window. Completely ignore this window and click on Utilities in the top menu and scroll down to Disk Utility and click it. When it comes up is your Hard Drive in the list on the left?

If it is, then click on the Mac OS partition of your hard drive in the left hand list. Then select the First Aid Tab and run Repair Disk. The Repair Disk button won't be available until you've clicked on the Mac OS partition on your hard drive. If that repairs any problems run it again until the green OK appears and then run Repair Permissions. After repairing use Startup Disk from the same menu to choose your hard drive for restarting from your hard drive.

If your hard drive isn’t recognized in Disk Utility then your hard drive is probably dead.

Good sleuthing. It indeed sounds like the internal connecting cable. You can confirm this further by plugging it into your sick computer externallyand booting from it (Boot-option). Bad cables are not that infrequent.

I suspect your Mac is a mid-2009 MacBook Pro. They made mid-2009 and mid-2010 models and the ribbon cable appears to be the same for both.

You can check ifixit.com, Amazon, or elsewhere for the part.

hands4,

So riddle me this: I have a late-2009 MacBook Pro 13in offering up the "?" file folder on startup, and the computer - seemingly to save its life - cant find the OS disk. Now, that being said, I can pull the hard drive and connect it to another MBP via USB adapter and read all the information just fine. I attempted to Verify and Repair the disk, both operations completed successfully, still wont recognize the disk. Boot into the Recovery partition and launch Disk Utility, no sign of it.

Is it possible that I have an issue of physical connection between the drive and computer for some reason?

Any suggestions greatly appreciated!!

I had this same question mark folder flashing problem. I would hear the disk every time I turned my Macbook off and back on. I tried that about 8 times, and had the flashing question mark folder every time. I turned the computer off, and slapped the bottom of it a few times, (NO JOKE), and turned it on again. It worked, and I have had no issues since. I figured the disk just got jammed up or something.

Urgent help please:(

so my Mac died with that stupid flashing question mark ,now it is with Apple authorised ppl ,firs they said it might be the drive(utility and all that stuff wifi and so on not showing any hard)after they took it out seams still working,then 2 days later they change the cable from m.board to hard as second thing and saying still not working,now they want to run next diagnose to see what it is .can someone tell me please what can it be since they are saying they will need to look at it for next 7 days ,can I trust them or they just going to s... things up?

Can be perhaps the logic board or just the chip on logic board or shall they just try to plug in a new hard drive ? Help pls

I have accidentally deleted all the contents on my iMac late 2012, with no CD Drive. The folder with the question mark has come up, and I have tried to put it in Recovery mode, Target Mode, and even had my hard drive attach to see if it could recognize the external hard drive. The folder is still coming up and flashing. Not sure what to do. Any suggestions?

hello. Help me please.

I just got at macbook pro (mid 2012) from a friend. Going to use it in addition to my mac mini on recordings music in church. I was following disk utility - erase to start fresh. Now I only get the question mark. I get it - I erased to much. But how can I get the macbook to start up again.

hoping for help. 🙂

Hi. Hope you can advise, I powered on my 11 years old iMac today. It came on as usual. I didn't manage to connect to wifi, so I went on to the desktop to do some housekeeping. After creating a new folder, the cursor turned into a round rainbow ball spinning. I shutdown the mac by pressing the power button. When I turn it on again, the question mark folder appeared.

I'm not using a apple keyboard, therefore I'm unable to startup as recommended. Instead of command key + R, I pressed on Window key + R, shift key + R, alt key + R. Nothing happen.

Can anyone help please. Thank u.

Startup Issues - Resolve

Startup Issues - Resolve (2)

Startup Issues - Resolve (3)

Hi I start my mac today and it only a folder with a question mark appears what can I do

Each time I try to put on my macbook.. I see a blinking white folder... I just don't know what to do.... Am helpless now.. Guys I need some help here

None of these solutions worked for me. I am running 10.9 Mavericks. And I just updated to 10.9.2 developer update and when it went to restart, well, it wouldn't, but it did in safe mode. Where I went to Disk Utility and tired to do a repair, but it came up with a message, saying something like, "It can't do live update or repair" something like that, I didn't write it down. Then the spinning circle kept spinning and then it froze. So I had to manually turn off the machine. And then I unplugged it and tired to reboot again, and that is when I got the flashing folder at startup. I tired all the solutions from this thread and others, and I can't get it to boot in any other way.

RichardEL is probably correct. I’ll go through your questions.

> there is no Mac OS partition, I assume it would be directly underneath the HD on the left?

I have not seen this particular condition where the hardware disk icon appears but the system volume that is supposed to be below it does not. The System Disk partition would be below the HD icon indented to the right. It is usually called “Macintosh HD” unless you renamed it.

> when I go into disk utility my HD appears on the left, but I can repair or verify it

Odd. It appears but you cannot manipulate it with Disk Utility.

> The S.M.A.R.T status reads verified

If it did not say Verified then it would indicate a problem. Saying Verified does not rule out problems but I think it indicates it is still breathing.

> Is the HD deceased?

If you booted the Recovery Partition (Boot, Command-R), which it sounds like you did, then at least part of the disk is still breathing. If it took a long time to boot then that may have been a Network Recovery boot which would indicate the disk is very sick or dead.

> [If I] restore from time machine [will] everything will be back as it was before?

Yes. That is the beauty of Time Machine. All your data, applications, and system preferences will be as they were as of the last backup.

> I was thinking of erasing the HD, would this be of any help or do I just need a new one?

Given what you reported from the Disk Utility steps you took it is unclear to me if there will be a way to repair the current volume, if you can erase and install from scratch or if you need a new disk. Before proceeding it may be useful to have an expert at an Apple store look at it for you. They may be able to revive it without a clean install or new disk.

As was the case above, it could be a good disk with a bad cable in which case a new disk is not going to help. To test this you can purchase an inexpensive external enclosure, remove the internal disk, place it in the enclosure, plug it in and then use Boot-Option to attempt to boot from the now external disk. Here are links to the screwdrivers and enclosure you would need.

$5 Toolkit: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TOOLKITMHD/

$22 USB 3.0 enclosure: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/ES2.5BU3W/

If you attempt a clean install, use the Partition tab to repartition the disk, selecting one partition and with “Options…” electing a GUID partition. Then use the Erase tab, select “Security Options…” and set it to write a single pass of zeros. This will write to every sector to map out bad blocks. (If you have an SSD do not write a pass of zeros.)

If you do need to replace it I recommend an new inexpensive (~$100) and super-fast hybrid SSHD drive that has an 8 GB SSD cache that makes the data fly. Google “Seagate 1 TB hybrid SSHD”.

Thanks for the swift replies guys.

Yeah I have an appointment booked at the store for friday, so I think I will wait till then and see what they say, but I think upgrading to one of those HDs you are talking about might be a good idea anyway.

Thanks!