Grey screen with a 'blocked' symbol and spinning wheel

Question

Level 1

8 points

Grey screen with a 'blocked' symbol and spinning wheel

I came home to my 2 week old Macbook air after my brother had been using it to find a grey screen with a 'block' simbol (i.e. road block symbol with circle and line diagonaly through it) where the apple logo usually is and a spinning wheel. I held the power button for a few second and it turned off, then restarted it aparently fine. What did this screen mean? Did i disrupt anything i should not have by shutting it down?

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Feb 24, 2014 2:43 AM

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Answer 1

dominic23

Level 10

83,904 points

Feb 24, 2014 4:12 AM in response to cody133

Try steps suggested in this article.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2570

Restart.

Startup in Safe mode

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14204?viewlocale=en_US

Repair Disk

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5836

Reset PRAM: http://support.apple.com/kb/ph14222

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Answer 2

Feb 24, 2014 4:39 AM in response to cody133

That symbol appears when the boot system is missing extensions for your machine. It has been know to occur when the operating system from a different (older or newer) mac OS has been copied or restored or set as the boot volume for a particular Mac. It means "though a boot volume (system folder) has been found" - the machine can not use it.

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Answer 3

Dibenkorn

Level 2

405 points

Feb 25, 2014 10:09 AM in response to cody133

> Did i disrupt anything i should not have by shutting it down?

No. When the Mac is frozen or otherwise will not shutdown forcing a power off is the prescribed procedure.

If it continues to happen and dominic23's sugestions do not help, take it back to Apple for a free repair or replacement. It has a one-year standard warranty and three years if you purchased AppleCare.

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