Why does this happen?

[SP2184]

I went on vaction and when I got back my computer is messed up!
Why does this happen to me?
In my company they had someone fill in my postion while I was gone. He worked on my mac and he even said he never worked on one before.
I come back and something is wrong with it.

When I turn it on.. a gray screen comes up with a box and the earth blinking in the center.. then it goes to a little folder icon blinking.. then the fan start going really really fast.. for about 3-5 min. Then it stops and it let me log in. What happen?! What did he do?!
What can I do to stop this from happening???

Thanks!

[Geeky1]

Chances are he changed the boot order. I can't tell you why this happens (and it doesn't just happen to you, believe me)... Actually, that's not quite true. I could, but it would involve describing the intelligence of a decently sizable percentage of the human race using colorful four letter words that have no place in a family-friendly forum.

Regardless. Assuming that that's what he did (I'm figuring that he didn't really break anything too badly), save your work and close your programs, go to the Apple menu, then go to system preferences, then select 'startup disk' under the System heading:


Open that up, and then make sure that the icon that looks like a folder is selected; your menu may look a bit different than mine... but it should have a folder icon with a label like "Mac OS X, 10.something.something on something. Like this:


Select that and then hit restart. See if it starts up normally after that.

[SP2184]

Chances are he changed the boot order. I can't tell you why this happens (and it doesn't just happen to you, believe me)... Actually, that's not quite true. I could, but it would involve describing the intelligence of a decently sizable percentage of the human race using colorful four letter words that have no place in a family-friendly forum.

Regardless. Assuming that that's what he did (I'm figuring that he didn't really break anything too badly), save your work and close your programs, go to the Apple menu, then go to system preferences, then select 'startup disk' under the System heading:


Open that up, and then make sure that the icon that looks like a folder is selected; your menu may look a bit different than mine... but it should have a folder icon with a label like "Mac OS X, 10.something.something on something. Like this:


Select that and then hit restart. See if it starts up normally after that.

THANKS SOOOO MUCH!!!! That worked!!! Your a life saver! =)