Start up blinking question mark with a folder

Sounds to me like a Hard Drive failure.

harcosparky said:

Sounds to me like a Hard Drive failure.

Click to expand...

Yeah, its either mechanical failure of the disk, or just your boot files / system files are corrupted. You should try to boot with the installation CD, and check if you see your disk with the disk utility. If you see it, try verify/repair, if that fails, try erase/reinstall.

If you dont see your disk. Its 100% foobared, you need to replace the disk.

atomicx90 said:

All of a sudden I start up my iMac G5 and there a folder with a blinking question mark and is there any cheap and easy way on just rebooting the whole computer.
Please help

Thanks

Click to expand...

The folder with a blinking question mark means that there was no boot drive found.
Try pressing and holding the alt/option key after turning it on. All available boot drives should be displayed. If none is shown, your internal hard drive is probably dead.
If your internal drive is displayed, click it and it should boot. Then go to Apple Menu --> System Preferences --> Start Volume and make sure it is selected. This way it should be found on startup automatically.

If you want to replace the internal drive, it depends on which model iMac G5 you have whether you need to get a 3.5" PATA or SATA drive.