[jam8]

I am a recent Mac convert, and i have a question about the booting up of my ibook g4 1ghz.

Sometimes when i boot up, i hear the harddrive whirl for a second, and then when the lcd powers on, a folder with a question mark comes up before the apple smily face comes up, and then the mac os x screen comes on.

on a Windows comp, a question mark like that and the sound would be mildly alarming. is everything alright on the ibook?

i just want to make sure everything is ok! i appologize for my windows induced paranoia

[SSharon]

that question mark means its looking for a valid boot drive. you normally see it if you have a mac with no valid OS, although you may also see it if you have multiple HDs with bad jumper settings. In your case I have no idea why it shows you the question mark and then boots unless its looking for something else to boot from first. Have you ever told it to boot off a network volume? external drive? are you accidentally holding 'c' at startup telling it to find a CD to boot from thats not there?

[jam8]

panther was originally on the harddrive. the previous owner installed tiger which he got from work at an apple retail shop.

it's only there for a second, and then it boots normally.

[wataru]

That happens when there is no default boot drive set, and the system has to search around for one. It quickly finds the internal hard drive and continues booting, which is why the blinking folder only lasts for a second or so.

To fix this, go into the Startup Disk prefpane and select your boot drive from the list.