MacBook Pro 2008 - Need Expert Advise Pls.

[EdgeB]

Hi There!

I have a 2008 MacBook Pro which won't completely boot up. All it does is when I fire it up is, it flashes a folder in the middle of the screen, and it has a "?" mark in the middle of the folder.

This all started when I installed this program called MacTune-up, and ran a back-up using this program. It basically indicated an error that "start-up disk is full" in the middle of its process, but there was no cancel or other option to change the drive.. I hit force quit.

I booted it up, and here I am with this issue. I'm in New Orleans, anyone know of a good tech or shop you can refer me too locally? Also, anyway I can recover anything off of the machine at this point?

Thanks in advance, I appreciate your time and help.

Regards,

EB

 

[MacDawg]

Here is the support article

Basically your computer is not reading an operating system

 

[Hmac]

Sounds like your OS is corrupted. Should respond just fine to starting from your install disk and reinstalling OSX. Note that you will lose all your data if you reinstall, so I hope you have been backing up.

If you haven't been backing up, you might get by with booting from DiskWarrior and repairing your startup disk without losing everything, or you can boot your machine up in Target Disk mode and by connecting it to another Mac you might be able to pull data off of it. IOW, you may have a bad OS so you can't boot, but you still may well be able to get that HDD recognized by another computer. What I have done in the past is pull the hard drive, put it in, like, a Thermaltake enclosure, and connect it externally to another Mac.