newmacman
October 12th, 2004, 08:44 PM
I am trying to use an old mac laptop but when I turn it on I jsut get a small icon of a disk with a question mark in it--no matter what buttons I hit nothing happens--whats going on here
Buzz
October 13th, 2004, 08:25 PM
Hi newmacman,
The blinking question mark means the computer can not locate an available boot system on the hard drive. This could mean that there is not boot system or that the boot system is so corrupt that it's not usable.
In any case, you are going to need a bootable MacOS CD to correct the issue in most cases.
StudioPhile
October 20th, 2004, 07:49 AM
If you find a boot cd that will work with your laptop. Insert the disk and then restart holding down the 'C' key to force it to book from the disk. The folder icon does mean it cannot find the core system startup files. It is possible to fix it by reinstalling.