Blue folder with a question mark...rabblerabblerabble

Hi all,

I'm having this weird perfect storm of everything going wrong with my macbook (bought in late 2006, oldish, I know :^\) but the main issue right now is that I closed it one day and when I came back to it I noticed the screen was off but the fan and everything was still running. I held down the power button for a few seconds and shut it down and when I turned it on it displayed a blue screen and a folder with a question mark on it. I've read everywhere how some suggest you run the disk utility and try to repair it, but here's the problem :

1) I don't have my Leopard cd anymore. I threw it out because

2) My optical drive doesn't even work anymore.

So is there any way I can try and fix my computer? At my immediate disposal I have a few external hard drives and two computers. Both are PCs though.

I know it looks bleak but any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for reading

You need....

1. Your Leopard DVD or a retail Snow Leopard DVD.

2. A working Optical Drive. (internal or external)

3. A new hard drive.

Try booting into single user mode and doing a disk repair from there. Directions can be found here You may need to run the fsck command several times to correct all of the errors although you will not need to reboot every time.

I tried to get into single user mode...

...but all that happens is it still boots up into the blue folder with the '?'

Is this indicative of anything? I tried holding shift as well to boot into safe mode but it went through to the folder as well. The only thing that kind of works is if I hold the option key but all that happens is I can see a mouse cursor and nothing else.

Thanks again

Yeah, it's telling you it cannot find a valid System Folder.

The guys are right. If you've made a couple of attempts to run that fsck (file system check) in single user mode and are still getting the question mark then it's probably time for a new hard drive and reinstallation of the system software.