Macbook Air Shows Folder With ? When I Open It

I bought a one year old Macbook Air from a friend two months ago. I have only used it for email, photos, Skype, Facebook and Youtube. Last night, I fell asleep without shutting it down.
When I woke up this morning, there was a grey screen. I shut it down and restarted it. All it shows is a grey screen with a folder icon with a question mark.

Is my computer dead? Did I get a virus?

I have been using a twelve year old G4 until now that my ex-husband set up with firewalls and other security measures. The friend I bought the laptop from is out of the country right now and I don't even remember if the laptop had protection. I do know that my router is password protected

I would greatly appreciate some clues! Thanks.

You don't have a virus. There aren't any viruses for the Mac (which makes me very suspicious of your ex-husband as well, but never mind that now).

The image you are seeing indicates that the computer cannot find a working system folder to boot from. Because I assume you are using Lion or Mountain Lion on that computer, you should be able to reboot to a recovery partition by restarting the machine and holding down the R key while it is booting up. You can use the limited utilities there to help you determine what is going on with the rest of the SSD drive in the MacBook Air.

If the SSD has for some reason failed entirely -- and this would be the first report I have ever seen of that happening -- it will need to go to a tech for replacement. If it is still under AppleCare warranty, I'd take it to a an authorized Apple service provider (AASP) or a retail Apple Store if there's one near to you.

Welcome to the Mac Forums.

Your computer is not dead and you don't have a virus as there are none that can infect your MacBook Air. The gray screen with a question mark on the folder indicates that it can't find anything to boot from. The SSD (solid state drive) within the MacBook Air may have failed while you were asleep.

Try holding down the command and r keys to start the computer. That should boot it to the recovery partition where you can run Disk Utility to check the SSD. If you're unfamiliar with how to do that.....

Do you know if the machine is still under warranty (extended Apple Care)? If it is, take it to an authorized Apple repair service center or Apple Store and have them look at it.

(Looks like chas beat me to it. Guess I have to type faster.)

Thank You Both!

Ok, thanks guys. I tried that and it brought up the following: an image of a globe with a ! in the middle and then the address apple.com/support followed by, -6003F. I am off to apple.com support to figure out what that message means.

I am not sure if the computer is still under warranty. I will be able to ask next week.

And, chas_m? My ex is a rather suspicious guy in some ways. I am feeling a little bit urpy thinking about the fact that he was just here last week to pick up my daughter. I put my laptop away while he was here. Hopefully it wasn't tampered with. Fingers crossed.

I spoke with Apple support. That message means that the computer isn't able to access diagnostics. It isn't under warranty and I will be taking it to the Apple store at the campus downtown, apparently.

Another thing I want to add: I read chas_m essay for switchers and newbies and it is a really great place to start! Muchas Gracias!

I spoke with Apple support. That message means that the computer isn't able to access diagnostics. It isn't under warranty and I will be taking it to the Apple store at the campus downtown, apparently.

Click to expand...

Thanks for posting back. Make sure you ask the Apple technician to give you an estimate of cost to repair the machine before you allow them to do the repairs. They should do that anyway, but it's always best to ask. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.