macbook hangs and displays a question mark

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Level 1

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macbook hangs and displays a question mark

The laptop hangs and restarts. After reboot the folder with a question mark comes out. When you press cmd+R and check HDD writes that with it everything is normal. BUT! when you reinstall os, the hard disk is turned off. I reboot again and the hard drive works, but time passes and it is disconnected again. What to do? HDD then appears that shuts down. It happens that the system starts, but when it freezes again and again.

MacBook Pro, macOS High Sierra (10.13.1)

Posted on Apr 9, 2018 9:09 AM

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Answer 1

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Carolyn Samit

Level 10

165,615 points

Apr 9, 2018 9:16 AM in response to SantaDead

The question mark on boot indicates your Mac cannot find a system folder to boot from.

Startup your Mac while holding down the Option key. That should launch the Startup Manager window where you can select the startup disk then click Restart.

That disk is grayed out, it's likely the disk is failing or has failed.

If a flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 2

dwb

Level 7

32,920 points

Apr 9, 2018 9:28 AM in response to SantaDead

When the flashing question mark folder appears it means the computer cannot locate a valid OS which can mean anything from a dead drive to a munged operating system. It sounds like you are doing all the right things. The only other step you might try before getting the drive replaced is to restart in Internet Recovery mode (command option R) but honestly in this instance I don't think it would change anything. If Disk Utility reports the drive is ok when you are booted into the recovery partition I wouldn't expect it to report anything different from the Internet Recovery.

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macbook hangs and displays a question mark

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