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Folder with question mark error

Hi everyone, I have an iMac A1195 2006 which was running OS X Lion great no issues, I have decided to sell it on so I erased the hard drive and tried to re install Lion. I am now greeted with the folder with question mark in it and cannot proceed any further. I have tried my install discs from my MacBook and that lets me get into disk utility and I have tried first aid and all is fine it recognises the hard drive and has no problems but when I try to get to boot into recovery from the iMac itself I get the dreaded folder. I also have Lion on a USB pen drive but I cannot get it to boot from the drive. I have tried everything I can find off the net but nothing seems to work. Incidentally the disk off my Macbook boots up fine it’s OS X 10.6.1 but the imac says its not compatable don’t know why because I had 10.7.5 installed. Can anyone help me as I’m totally stuck, the machine itself is mint and works fine, I just need help getting the software back up and running

many thanks in advance

Bill

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5), A1195

Posted on Mar 4, 2018 7:48 AM

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3 replies

Mar 4, 2018 9:32 AM in response to Whizzer66

You need to use a Retail 10.6 Snow Leopard Upgrade Disc to re-format the drive and install 10.6.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Apple


Then you will need to give that Retail 10.6 Disc to the new owner, so that they can update the Mac to a later macOS using their own Apple ID. Or optionally you can use the original 10.4 disc set that came with the Mac, give that to the new owner and then let them upgrade to 10.6 or later from there.


You can not, use a system disc from another Mac or a home made copy of 10.7 on a flash drive. You may be able to use a purchased 10.7 upgrade flash drive from Apple, but you will also need to pass it along to the new owner.

Folder with question mark error

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