jessicafromdurban

Q: Globe with exclamation mark, what does this mean? Please help?!r

My MacBook would not turn on it had a grey screen with a flashing question mark, I followed the information as to what I should do for that but it goes straight from a question mark to a globe with a triangle and an exclamation mark. Nothing turns on, it asks me to connect to the wifi network which I do but then takes me to the globe screen.

MacBook Pro, iOS 9

Posted on Sep 16, 2015 10:57 AM

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Q: Globe with exclamation mark, what does this mean? Please help?!r

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  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Sep 16, 2015 11:03 AM in response to jessicafromdurban
    Level 5 (7,694 points)
    Notebooks
    Sep 16, 2015 11:03 AM in response to jessicafromdurban

    Can you see anything similar in these…

    About the screens you see when your Mac starts up - Apple Support

     

    Do you have any backups of this Mac, if so what type? If not do you have a spare disk to use to make a backup?

     

    Try booting whilst holding 'alt' on the keyboard. See if you can select the Macintosh HD (your 'boot disk' may have another name), it should be a silver disk icon. Press return & see how far it gets into booting.

     

    Note any errors or dialogs (photographs are OK if you can't use screen capture).

     

     

    Post back with the results of holding alt.

  • by jessicafromdurban,

    jessicafromdurban jessicafromdurban Sep 16, 2015 11:15 AM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 16, 2015 11:15 AM in response to Drew Reece

    I Have tried holding alt as well and the same things happens, a screen comes up asking me to join a wifi network but that's as far as it gets. I'm not very tech savy when it comes to computers, I have no idea if the actual lap top is backed up, I doubt it. I only have documents backed up on an external hard drive. I don't have a spare disc for back up either. The only dialog that comes up is the apple.com/support -1005F.

  • by jessicafromdurban,

    jessicafromdurban jessicafromdurban Sep 16, 2015 11:21 AM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 16, 2015 11:21 AM in response to Drew Reece

    A Square with a globe that says internet recovery underneath is showing however when i press on the arrow It goes back to the apple support screen

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Sep 16, 2015 11:31 AM in response to jessicafromdurban
    Level 5 (7,694 points)
    Notebooks
    Sep 16, 2015 11:31 AM in response to jessicafromdurban

    Seems like your startup disk is damaged & the OS cannot use it. There are two main pieces to a default installation, a 'recovery partition' & the 'system partition'. The Mac seems to be unable to find either of those so it is falling back to use 'Internet recovery mode' instead.

     

    The internet recovery system is launching, that requires a stable internet connection and a WPA/ WPA 2 wifi network.

    OS X: About OS X Recovery - Apple Support

     

    You can also connect an ethernet cable to avoid the issues that wifi can introduce (slow performance & bad reception/ dropped connections). Ethernet is really the best option.

     

    Sorry you my need to take this Mac to an Applestore or contact Apple support. You may lose data if Apple repair it, inform any technicians at a store if this is your only copy of this data they generally do not do data recovery at Apple stores - it is a specialist task.

     

    You can use Apple diagnostics, but it doesn't try to fix anything on the Mac, it just tries to tell you what is wrong…

    Using Apple Diagnostics - Apple Support

     

    One final option is to use Target disk mode & another Mac. It may allow you to read some files & recover them, but I doubt it. It seems like your disk is not responding at all.

    https://support.apple.com/kb/PH10725?locale=en_US

    You need to have a suitable cable and two Macs to use it.

  • by jessicafromdurban,

    jessicafromdurban jessicafromdurban Sep 16, 2015 1:56 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 16, 2015 1:56 PM in response to Drew Reece

    Wow it all sounds rather confusing to me. Probably best for me to take it in to an Apple Store and pray I don't lose too much and that it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to get fixed. Thank you so so much for your time and your very prompt responses.