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littlegreenspud · Jun 10, 2005, 07:33 AM

Hi,

A weird problem for you all...

My G4 14" 933 iBook will not start from the internal HD. I get a flashing question mark folder thing. It is (was) running 10.3.8 when it shut down. It will start happily from a firewire HD or the CD.

All tests I have done (Techtool pro, Drive 10, Disk Warrior, Disk Utility) all say the internal HD is OK. Disk utility even reports that it is bootable. The system prefs even gives me the option to start from the internal HD, but if I try I get the flashing question mark folder.

I have reset the PRAM. I have gone into open firmware and reset-nvram, set-defaults and reset-all, but it still will not start from the internal HD!

Any Ideas?

Thanks

artaxerxes · Jun 10, 2005, 10:39 AM

I had exactly the same issue last week.

When you ran Techtool - did you tick Surface Scan? I hadn't (it isn't by default) and when I did it found many bad sectors on the HDD.

After repairing I was confronted by the same /?/ flashing away.

I then attempted to reinstall the OS - assuming it had been hosed. Hopefully it will work for you - an archive and install will recover as much of your settings as available.

Mine refused to re-install and I assume the HDD will have to be replaced. It currently languishes at Apple Service.
If yours is out of warranty you may have to replace it yourself.

Beg borrow or steal Diskwarrior before you take that step though.

littlegreenspud · Jun 10, 2005, 12:20 PM

Thanks - I have just run a surface scan and it checked out OK!

I even tried "blessing" the System folder using the "bless" command in the Terminal.

Still will not start yet.

pat++ · Jun 11, 2005, 11:36 AM

Originally Posted by littlegreenspud

Thanks - I have just run a surface scan and it checked out OK!

I even tried "blessing" the System folder using the "bless" command in the Terminal.

Still will not start yet.

See Recovering from a blinking "?".

littlegreenspud · Jun 12, 2005, 05:03 PM

pat++ - thanks for that link very interesting. But did not work, in the end I used disk utility to image the hard drive onto an external drive. Erased and zeroed the drive and restored from the image and it works now. Why and how that worked I don't know!