Flashing Hard-drive icon at every restart/reboot...?

[MIDI_EVIL]

Every time I restart this PowerBook G4 1.67, I'm welcomed by a hard-drive icon with a question mark in it, that flashes once, then proceeds to boot up properly.

My HD condition is verified by disk utility, from the app and from the disk. I'm also running SMARTreporter 24/7 and it logs everything as fine.

It has been doing this for about 3 months now but since I very rarely ever shut down or restart, it's never bothered me enough to report it.

I have no issues with speed concerning a dodgy HD, I think this is more of a software issue where something somewhere has been misconfigured.

Any help or solutions welcome.

[walnuts]

I'm relying on Windows experience here, but could it be a boot disc order issue? I know I've had this issue with Windows and I don't know if it also occurs in Mac. Could be that your mac is set to boot first from cd or other external and then from the hard disc? That would explain your symptoms. First, it tries your cd drive or external only to find that it can't boot from it, displays the startup disc question mark, and then stumbles upon your main hard drive and boots up fine.

[MIDI_EVIL]

I'm relying on Windows experience here, but could it be a boot disc order issue? I know I've had this issue with Windows and I don't know if it also occurs in Mac. Could be that your mac is set to boot first from cd or other external and then from the hard disc? That would explain your symptoms. First, it tries your cd drive or external only to find that it can't boot from it, displays the startup disc question mark, and then stumbles upon your main hard drive and boots up fine.

I could kiss you, that was it!

Thanks!

[walnuts]

Anytime- I'm glad it was so easy to fix!