Blinking folder with a question mark.

[bertomactic]

i am working on a Mac G5 that has a apparent hard drive issue. When I start the G5 it chimes and the Apple logo appears and the little wheel just spins and spins and never loads the OS. When i remove the hard drive and replace it and reboot the G5 i now get a blinking folder with a question mark. I tried several different replacement drives and get the same question mark icon. However, when i put the original hard drive back in I at least get the Apple logo and the spinning wheel..but still no OS loads......what up with dat...???

 

[Intell]

The replacement hard drive is probably blank. You need to install Mac OS X onto the replacement drive before it can run. If you are sure there is a proper OS on the drive, hold down the Option key at boot and select the replacement drive if it appears.

 

[bertomactic]

The replacement hard drive is probably blank. You need to install Mac OS X onto the replacement drive before it can run. If you are sure there is a proper OS on the drive, hold down the Option key at boot and select the replacement drive if it appears.

FYI - Heres what worked for me. I had access to a similar G5 so I put a working hard drive in it and installed the OS ( Leopard 10.5 on the hard drive.
I then removed the hard drive and put it into the other G5 and now it appears to be working ?????!! Any comments or insights would be greatly appriciated. is what i did the best remedy for this type of issue. ???

 

[iThinkergoiMac]

The blinking folder/question mark icon means the computer can't find a viable OS to boot from. You never did answer Intell's question: did you install OS X onto the replacement drives? You can't boot from a blank HDD.

 

[bertomactic]

The blinking folder/question mark icon means the computer can't find a viable OS to boot from. You never did answer Intell's question: did you install OS X onto the replacement drives? You can't boot from a blank HDD.

I believe i did answer Intels question. Cool. Thanks

 

[DrakkenWar]

Agreed...

There is not a viable read (bootable) install of either 10.4 or 10.5 on the primary hard drive. So you have a few options. If you want to stick with mac os? You need to either make your way to http://www.lowendmac.com, or ebay. to get a copy at a price you can afford. Or you might want to look at http://www.distrowatch.com for some viable alternatives. Granted Linux on the PPC arch is going out of style and fast, but for the time being it could be a fix to get you up and running until you can get a viable boot disk of Tiger or Leopard.

~Drake