My apple laptop starts up but a file pops up and it has a question mark on it then a box pops up telling me to restart my computer but when i restart it it does the same thing again

Turn on the computer and begin hitting the "F8" key when you see the BIOS screen.

This will take you to the Safe Mode menu.

Use the arrow keys to highlight "Safe Mode," then hit "Enter" on your keyboard.

This will boot your computer in Safe Mode, a minimalist manner of operating Windows that runs only essential Windows files.

If using Windows XP in Safe Mode, click the "Start" button and then click "Run." In the box that pops up, type "msconfig" and hit "Enter."

If using Windows Vista or Windows 7, click the Windows logo in the bottom left corner of the screen, type "msconfig" in the search field and then hit "Enter."

This will open the System Configuration Utility.

In the System Configuration Utility box, click the "Services" tab, check the box that reads, "Hide All Microsoft Services," click "Disable All" and then click "Apply."

In the System Configuration Utility box, click the "Startup" tab, click "Disable All" and then click "Apply." Next, click the "Close" box.

A box will pop up that prompts you to restart your computer.

Select "Restart" and let the computer restart itself, allowing it to boot to Windows normally.

If the computer still stalls when trying to boot to Windows, restart the computer and boot to Safe Mode again.

Run your antivirus program in Safe Mode, deleting any files that are flagged as viruses, spyware or malware. Restart the computer and boot to Windows normally

hope this helps

Turn on the computer and begin hitting the "F8" key when you see the BIOS screen.

This will take you to the Safe Mode menu.

Use the arrow keys to highlight "Safe Mode," then hit "Enter" on your keyboard.

This will boot your computer in Safe Mode, a minimalist manner of operating Windows that runs only essential Windows files.

If using Windows XP in Safe Mode, click the "Start" button and then click "Run." In the box that pops up, type "msconfig" and hit "Enter."

If using Windows Vista or Windows 7, click the Windows logo in the bottom left corner of the screen, type "msconfig" in the search field and then hit "Enter."

This will open the System Configuration Utility.

In the System Configuration Utility box, click the "Services" tab, check the box that reads, "Hide All Microsoft Services," click "Disable All" and then click "Apply."

In the System Configuration Utility box, click the "Startup" tab, click "Disable All" and then click "Apply." Next, click the "Close" box.

A box will pop up that prompts you to restart your computer.

Select "Restart" and let the computer restart itself, allowing it to boot to Windows normally.

If the computer still stalls when trying to boot to Windows, restart the computer and boot to Safe Mode again.

Run your antivirus program in Safe Mode, deleting any files that are flagged as viruses, spyware or malware. Restart the computer and boot to Windows normally

hope this helps

After logging in and you are at your desktop go to start and in the search box type run. click on run once it appears and a small box will pop up. In this box type msconfig this is your startup lineup so to speak. Click on the tab at the top that says startup and you will see a whole list with check marks next to them. Go down the list and uncheck anything that you may recognize that you do not need, such as google toolbar, yahoo im and so on.. it will then ask you to restart your computer, go ahead and do so. One important thing to remember is to never uncheck anything that says windows on it, these files are needed to run and start windows. You also may want to do a disk cleanup. You do this by going to start, programs, accessories, maintenance and there will be something saying disk clean up. place check marks in each box that has numbers to the left of it. This will delete all of your temp files and things that are not needed. This together should make your system speed up some.

Hi,
You need to reset the firmware.
Remove the battery, and boot up but holing the power button down until you hear a loud Beeeeeeeeep, and the lights start flashing. Let go, and wait.
Regards.

http://www.cnet.com/topic-software/registry-cleaner.html

first start it with the left hand shift key depressed (not the shift lock above it ) this will cause it to safe boot and do some housekeeping on the drive,next if you can get it running is to go to applications and in there find utilities and select disc utility, select your hard drive and press repair permissions, the shop should have run this after the install. It takes a long time, mine takes 15 mins but if it is having trouble it can take longer. After this has finished verify the drive, if this needs work you will need a start up/ install ****, get back to me if thsi doen not cure it.

The ! mark is telling you that the computer knows you have a CD-ROM drive it just does not know how to talk to the device aka (driver)

If you have the disk the laptop came with it should have the drivers for the CD-ROM. If you don't you will need to go online and type in the model of you CD-ROM and the driver needed for it. Once you download the driver and reboot your laptop when you check the device manager the ! mark should go away.

Sometimes you can just right click on the device with the ! mark and say update driver and it might find the driver automatically for you.

Good Luck

Proteus

The computer is displaying a ? mark because it's telling you it has no idea how to start.

It's confused.

To un-confuse it, we've got to tell it how to start.

You're going to need to start the computer with an OS disk.

Have you got a copy of Panther, Tiger, Leopard or some other creature?

Let me know and we'll go from there.

The hard drive is probably on it's way out. You can get and run Disk Warrior and you could repair permissions and such but the hard drive is probably on it's way to the grave.

A couple things though. It isn't enough to just put the disk in, you need to hold down "c" while the computer starts for it to try to run off your disk. You can then try to repair permissions and fix the disk from the installation program that starts. When the Install OS X screen comes up (looks like a desktop but with the big dialog box in the middle) click on Utilities at the top and then on Disk Utility. HERE IS APPLE'S SITE for you to read about how to try to repair your disk. I've found that this sometimes works and may help it work enough for you to get your files off, but may not.

Another method would be to get another Mac, and hook the two together with a firewire to transfer your files, then reinstall OS X in your ailing computer. Go HERE to read about this technique.

You will probably need to reinstall OS X. The simple way is to pop in the disc and boot while holding C on the keyboard. You did delete system files, so why would you expect it to start? There's a chance that you can reinstall OS X without destroying all your information. Just make sure you chose correctly when you start the process.

First though, you might just try repairing the disk. Try using THIS SITE to do so. It should walk you through it.