Folder icon with question mark

I had my macbook on with a white blank screen today, couldn't get to the login dialog box but the fan is running. When I press the power button the screen turns black immediately, and it turns white again in 3 seconds when I press the power button again.

I'm a new mac-user and it's the first time I had problems with a mac, so I took a pc laptop and tried to read on mac forums and that's why I'm here. I already tried the option + apple key + p + r / option but it didn't work.

However after I tried a few times, a blinking icon of a folder with a question mark on it appears in the middle of the screen (the screen is still white). Does anybody know what it is and what does it mean?

I wonder if I must take my macbook back to the store for repair or if there's anything I can do with it....

Take it back to the store or call apple, you probably need a new hard drive.

Yeah, folder and question mark (as far as I know, could be wrong), means it can't find anything to boot from. Have you tried sticking the OS X disk in and booting from that?

skaheadpunk said:

Yeah, folder and question mark (as far as I know, could be wrong), means it can't find anything to boot from. Have you tried sticking the OS X disk in and booting from that?

Click to expand...

yes...just tried....I tried to verify it and it says that the disk needs repair - I then tried repair but it can't be repaired "becasue of an error"...

is there anything else I can do?

Buy a new HDD.

Or

Call Apple if you're under warranty and see what they can do - but it does sound like you need a new drive.

My boyfriend had this happen with his XP laptop - he ended up with a new HDD, but I can plug his old one into my laptop and still access a lot of his files and things, but nobody can boot from it or take a disk image. Maybe you can still recover some of your stuff.

domakiyip
did you get the problem fixed? i now have the same problem and i dont know how to go about solving it. what did you do and if you required a new hard drive were you able to salvage the data from the old drive?
thanks