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Hi everyone i have a big problem with my mac.

I went to turn my mac on today but it would not boot up. It went to the grey loading screen with the spinning gear thingy and would not go any further.

I tried everything that i could think of, but nothing worked so i decided to erase the hard drive and install a fresh new copy of OS X.

From reading though i have found that maybe it was an error with my permissions but anyways. The problem now is that when i start it up it just shows a no entry symbol.

My mac is a year old macbook with OS X.

I have been reading that this is because of a failing hard drive but i did a hardware test and there was no errors found.

Please can anyone help because there is not an apple shop nearby.

Thanks in advance
 

cwa107


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A PRAM reset should fix that. I've found that the "no" sign over a folder usually means that the EFI can't find a partition that no longer exists.

Start with your Mac turned off. Press the power button, wait for the grey screen to appear. Press and hold Command + Option + P + R simultaneously. Continue to hold until you hear the system chime three times. After that, things should be back to normal.
 
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still no luck

i have reset the PRAM still the same thing.

If i leave it at the symbol for a while it changes to a flashing folder with a question mark.

I have also set startup to the OS X iinstalled.

I have read through all them apple articles i have done everything on them.

If its a hard drive problem why would it let me install the operating system in the first place.
 
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Ahh!
This morning I turned my Mac on for some reason it wasn't chiming, and after a few seconds would go to a no exit symbol.
I've tried the Com/Alt/PR hold many times, and now it does chime, but still goes to the no exit symbol or sometimes progresses to a flashing folder picture with a ? in it.
I've tried holding x - once this gave me an image of mh HDD and the option to select it, when upon selecting i just got the symbols again. I haven't been able to make that happen again.

I accepted the request to update various bits of odd software last night, which i gather may have something to do with it.

Please help, thank you.



Thank God it's happened while i'm on a uni break.

I'm so annoyed. This is my second major mess up in just over a year of mac ownership, when i've had nothing comparable on a pc.
 
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Same **** problem

I seriousl don't get why I'm getting this no entry symbol on start up. Tried th cmd opt pr thing, no joy, so reinstalled snow leopard and it then worked for a day before it came back.

reinstalled again and same thing stopped abut a day later.

They took the more drastic option to wipe the hard drive reinstall and start again. I thought I had fixed the problem, but it's just come back again. Surely this means its now a hardware problem.

Hope this is not the end for my beloved mackbook.
 

cwa107


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Pretty sure you've got a bad HDD there. Fortunately, replacing it shouldn't cost you more than $100.
 
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Can I add that holding down shift i can boot into safe mode, but what then . The disk cant be that bad.
 

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It sounds to me like you've got bad sectors. A reformat cures it for a few days, but then corruption follows as the disk tries to write data to bad sectors. You can get a more concrete picture by running the SMART Utility.

HDDs are one of, if not THE most common point of failure in modern PCs. It's not unusual at all to see a hard drive fail, particularly in a laptop where they are exposed to shock and vibration that a desktop would not be.
 
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ive just downloaded and run smart utility and it comes back with passed. though it does take about 20 seconds to run so not sure what it's done.
 

cwa107


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Can you share some of the stats reported by the SMART Utility? In particular, I'm curious about Pending/Removed/Reallocated sectors and any errors.
 
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Mine said 14 errors.

The thing that puzzles me is that I have PCs with Seagate hard drives which have been running faultlessly for many years. All of these are in boxes where you just turn a couple of knurled nuts and remove the side, if you wanted to replace the disk.

Why does it have to be the sealed unit iMac which is less than two years old that has a Seagate disk which is failing?

Why can't Apple buy good quality Seagate disks, rather than use their seconds? :(

Incidentally, you can set the SMART Utility to only show a fail if the number of bad sectors increases. It doesn't help, but makes you feel better. It makes you feel the £900 you spent less than two years ago is not about to turn into an expensive ornament very soon.

Sorry, had a bad month trying to get my iPhone to work with 3G - so feeling a little touchy about such things at present. Everything else I have ever bought from Apple has been superb quality. :\
 

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Mine said 14 errors.

The thing that puzzles me is that I have PCs with Seagate hard drives which have been running faultlessly for many years. All of these are in boxes where you just turn a couple of knurled nuts and remove the side, if you wanted to replace the disk.

Why does it have to be the sealed unit iMac which is less than two years old that has a Seagate disk which is failing?

That doesn't mean it's failing. It's the sector issues we're worried about. Just read errors don't amount to much.

Why can't Apple buy good quality Seagate disks, rather than use their seconds? :(

I seriously doubt they use their "seconds". These drives are mass produced, all on the same line. The label that's slapped on it has little baring on the quality of the mechanism. Now, if we were talking about the difference between server class, SCSI or SAS mechanisms, that would be a different story.

Incidentally, you can set the SMART Utility to only show a fail if the number of bad sectors increases. It doesn't help, but makes you feel better. It makes you feel the £900 you spent less than two years ago is not about to turn into an expensive ornament very soon.

Sorry, had a bad month trying to get my iPhone to work with 3G - so feeling a little touchy about such things at present. Everything else I have ever bought from Apple has been superb quality. :\

I feel for you, but as I understand it, the glass-paneled iMacs are a lot more serviceable than the old plastic ones. The biggest pain is popping off the panel and keeping it dust/debris free while you go about your work. If you need a service manual, let me know.
 
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It says 14 Pending Bad Sectors and 14 Removed Bad Sectors. :(
 

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You would really consider forcing an iMac open to service it yourself? :eek:


I tried that once with a Netbook in order to upgrade the memory and it has not worked properly since then. Not really all that confident with very small electronics. I have built PCs in the past, but I had better eyesight then :Smirk:
 

cwa107


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You would really consider forcing an iMac open to service it yourself? :eek:


I tried that once with a Netbook in order to upgrade the memory and it has not worked properly since then. Not really all that confident with very small electronics. I have built PCs in the past, but I had better eyesight then :Smirk:

Sure, been there, done that.

If you have the service manual, the right tools and a bit of patience, it's really not as bad as you think. Netbooks are designed to be disposable, and so they really don't make them with any serviceability in mind.
 
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My iMac is a 2008 20"

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac8,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: IM81.00C1.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.29f1
Serial Number (system): VM816BPMZE3
Hardware UUID: C40DB70F-32A9-50F6-B6C6-1D0A147EF8E1


I am guessing that is not as easy to open as a G5?

Rather than the '3 screws and it hinges open', this is more of a 'pull off the glass panel, cut yourself on the shattered pieces of glass' operation? :(
 
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Further note I've scanned every block on my disk, all the memory and the filesystem files and permissions and all are perfect.

But yet one min it works and then you shutdown and restart and it won't log in again.

**** thing.
 

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