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Flashing Question Mark . . . an omen?
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Junior Member
Join Date: Jan 2002
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Offline
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I had to boot into OS 9 tonight (a rare occasion), so I went through the usual routine of changing the startup disk preference to OS 9. When my iBook rebooted, I was greeted by the folder and flashing question mark. I tried to force the machine to reboot into X by holding the 'x' key up on restarting, and had no success. I then booted from my OS X install cd, and I am now in the process of reinstalling OS X.
I'm wondering if this is usually indicative of a serious hardware problem, like a failing hard disk, or if it could be a one time annoyance. Anybody have any advice?
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Black MacBook C2D 2.0 Ghz, stock, Powerbook 15" 1Ghz (Al), iPhone 8 GB
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Syracuse
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Run Disk Warrior, if you dont have it, buy it, it's worth it.
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Jun 1999
Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA
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What a coincidence!
Last night I was at my MUG meeting and our leader was going to demonstrate USB printer sharing with OS 9 and his iBook (he normally never boots to OS 9). When he did, he got the same thing, a flashing question mark. Rebooting into OS X wouldn't work either. Restarting into open firmware showed no boot volume. This was also confirmed by booting with the option key down--no bootable volumes.
So I thought I'd help out with my own iBook and I got the same results (I never boot into OS 9 either)!
Fortunately, someone there had the OS X version of Diskwarrior on CD and it fixed both of our iBooks without reinstalling system software. According to Diskwarrior, there was no blessed System Folder. That was the only problem.
We used Diskwarrior because it was there, but knowing what I know now, I suspect that this problem could be fixed simply by booting to any OS 9 CD and reblessing the System Folder (i.e. drag the Finder to the Desktop, then drag it back).
Very strange though. That's three of us with the same problem. I kind of suspect it's an iBook problem, since my son regularly boots his older G3 iMac back and forth from OS 9 to OS X and we have the same system software.
I realize this doesn't explain the problem, but it's probably not a failing hard drive. I have not yet investigated further and probably won't since I have no need to boot to 9.
Chris
(Last edited by chabig; Aug 15, 2003 at 01:51 PM.
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Moderator  Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Atlanta, GA
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That was a constant problem for me with my iBook 500 and I don't think it ever really went away, I just booted less and less into OS 9 so I didn't have to worry about it. But I was usually able to get around it by using an OS 9 boot disk and selecting the correct system from its Startup disk CP.
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