Ok...WTF just happened to my Mac, and should I be concerned?

[MattG]

I turned on my G4. It was taking an abnormally long time to boot up. I look up, and there's a big international symbol for "no" (a circle with a slash through it) on my screen. I turned off the computer, turned it back on, and this time it booted up fine. What just happened, and is it something I should be concerned about?

[Awimoway]

I think that means it couldn't find a startup disk. Don't know why it couldn't. Glad it works now.

[7on]

Could be potential harddrive failure. Just make sure you have a fairly recent backup at hand when it stops working. Personally I'd make weekly backups if I were you. and in about 3-4 months if it doesn't occur again you can cut back to monthly backups. I always do montly backups.

[neoelectronaut]

If it's a picture of a globe or earth, I'm pretty sure it's trying to boot from a network drive. That happens to me sometimes...it reverts to that for some reason.

For me, holding d while it's booting usually fixes the issue.

[Dont Hurt Me]

i would go to your start up disk in system preferences and make sure you have osx clicked on.

[neoelectronaut]

You want it to look like this...

Is there any way to get rid of the network startup icon? I'm never going to use it and it will just solve the problem of it getting accidently selected again.

[skymac]

If you click the lock you wont be able to make an accidental selection

[MattG]

Everything is set the way it should be in startup disc...I'll run a permissions/disk repair and just hope for the best :)

[OutThere]

You should probably check the S.M.A.R.T (Self Monitoring and Reporting [I forget]) status of your hard drive. In disk utility click on the top picture of you hard drive, in the left hand box, and there will be a read out of drive info at the bottom of the window. You should see a line that says "S.M.A.R.T. status : Verified", if the box is not there don't worry. If the box says says anything other than Verified, then back up immediatley.