white macbook: Hard Drive Icon during startup?

I have a brand new white Macbook. been turned on about 6 times.

Last night, I turned it on, and the icon for the hard drive shows up in the middle of the screen, with an arrow pointing to it. i clicked the arrow, and everything resumes as normal.

i restart it once, same procedure. i restart it a third time, icon goes away for good.

what happened in that brief glimpse of time?

Open the Finder and select preferences. Make sure you have Hard disks checked under "Show these items on the Desktop". That option appears under the General tab.

Regards.

chscag said:

Open the Finder and select preferences. Make sure you have Hard disks checked under "Show these items on the Desktop". That option appears under the General tab.

Regards.

Click to expand...

thank you for the quick reply, but i am talking about the startup procedure, before you reach the desktop. this person had the same problem:

Macintosh HD Icon at Startup? - Mac Forums

it happened again today. leopard refuses to start up unless i first click a big, hard drive icon that appears in the middle of the screen.

this is my very first mac, so i have no idea if it's normal or not.

OK. I understand now - your first post wasn't clear. Open System Preferences, Startup Disk. Select the Macintosh HD as the startup disk.

Regards.

Thanks! will try.

I too am wondering if this is a problem. I have a 3-year old MacBook Pro and just recently, it seems to be slowing down a little. Maybe 1 in 5 times I start it up, I get a gray screen with a BIG hard drive icon in the middle and an arrow under it. I have to click this arrow to proceed and all is well. But why is it suddenly doing this? Is it a sign that something is going to fail?

Forgot to mention... two months of warranty left. I think I'll be heading to the genius bar.

Just follow chscag's advice given in post # 4.