Flashing Folder Hi there, I have an Apple MacBook 13" that won't boot up. It started off with a blue screen and flashing folder with a question mark in it and now it just boots up with a bright blue screen. Can you help me reboot my MacBook so I can at least save any information that I might need... Thanks, Matt.

It probably means your hard drive is dead or severely damaged. You will probably lose all data that you haven't backed-up.

If you need further help, reach me via phone at https://www.6ya.com/expert/john_77bb351c0c06b354

Hi Joe. It means that the start-up drive has some corruption of some sort. I've posted previously what to do in such situations so just search for flashing question mark and there's a walkthrough of possible fixes.

The DVD ticking sound is normal and happens every time you power on. The blue screen of death is not normal. The flashing question mark means corrupt start up file. Re-install the operating system or insert disc 1 of your gray install disc and go into disk utilities and select repair permissions. Then select repair hard drive.

update the driver of that folder with the question mark. viit mac's website and you'll see downloads of drivers free for end users. http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/drivers/

Your macbook is not locating your hardrive.
turn off your laptop, insert the Mac OS disc in the drive, and then reboot while holding down the c key to allow it to boot from the OS on the DVD.
Then use the disk utilities application from the desktop menu and to a disk repair on your hard drive and then restart.

Sounds like someone spilled windex on it. You may be out of luck if it ran down and hit the electronics. (which it sounds like it did)

Hi there,

what this means is that the computer can't find the system. the repair could be a simple system reinstall or you may need a new harddrive in the computer.

Hope its the reinstall
Cheers

That message means that it can't find the start up folder and or your hard drive has crashed.

If you insert your OS disk or a copy of Disk Warrior you can boot to the cd / dvd by holding down the "C" key and then powering up the Macbook.

Let me know if you have that OS cd and then we'll go from there.

The flashing folder means that the computer can't find the boot system on the hard drive. If your girlfriend's step-dad has removed some parts of the OS, then the system will not start giving the 'flashing folder' result. You will need to re-install the OS from the system disk.
Insert the disk into the computer and it will boot from that and take you through the install procedure.

Could be hard drive crash.. Try loading MAC OSX from CD to see if it will fire up.