[Hans M Aus]

MacBook ,10.4.11, 2GB Ram, 55GB disk with 22GB available.

Recently, my MacBook has stopped several times at startup with:
a gray screen,
image of a disk and
an arrow pointing up to the disk.

After I click on the arrow the system starts normally.

What does this mean?
Should I worry that the disk is about to die?

[seanc]

Is your option (alt) key stuck? That's the screen where you select what drive to boot from.

When in OS X, go to System Preferences, Startup Disks and select your hard drive containing Tiger (oops, not sure why I wrote Leopard before) and then restart the computer. All should be fine then.

[Hans M Aus]

My alt key doesn't seem to be stuck. I've selected the startup disk, rebooted, and am curious if the problem occurs again. Many thanks for your quick response.

[dowNNshift]

Your problem likely has to do with drive "Blessing". Basically drive blessing is how the Mac knows which Startup folder to regard as its default.

If you use BootCamp or dual partitions of Tiger/Leopard it's important to make sure that the primary start up folder is highlighted. That is called "Blessing-the-drive".

Also, it never hurts to repair your disk-permissions from time to time. That can be done using Disk Utility located in your Applications/Utilities folder.

[Hans M Aus]

I don't use either partitions or Bootcamp. The problem also reoccurred after I had used Disk Utility to repair the file permissions and verify the disk.

[Eriamjh]

Whatever it is, it is not a critical problem. It's what happens when you hold the option key. What does it do when you hold command-V while restarting?

Did you do what seanc said? Did it reboot properly (without having to chose the boot volume)?

[Hans M Aus]

Yes, I did what seanc suggested and the problem has not reoccurred since. Just tried starting with command v: a black screen with white text flew by and the MacOS started normally. Thanks to everyone for their helpful input.