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'prohibitory' icon on startup has me stumped

T

terzdesign

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 7, 2010
19
0
RESOLVED:

Hello

Last night I tried starting up my Macbook pro 15" (early 2009). It is running Yosemite 10.10.2. The mac started up as usual but locked up so I did a hard reset with the power button. Upon restarting, I am greeted with the usual apple logo and load bar just below it but about halfway through I get the 'prohibitory' sign (circle with cross bar sign for no entry). I keep getting this restart after restart.

I formatted an external hard drive using another mac to perform as a boot up disk for Yosemite and plugged it into the macbook. I boot to that and *sometimes* am able to get to disk util. When there, the internal hardrive is not showing up at all... thus I can't do any disk repairs with this method.

The HDD is spinning, I confirmed this. It seems to be a read issue. Any thoughts on what I should try next?
 
Last edited:
Try taking the internal drive out and connecting it with a USB -> SATA adapter. It's possible the internal cable died on you.
 
Or the logic board is fried

It is a 6 year old computer yopu are in the realms of logic board death. Especially the graphics cards on those 15 inch 2009 ones.
 
terzdesign said:
Hello

Last night I tried starting up my Macbook pro 15" (early 2009). It is running Yosemite 10.10.2. The mac started up as usual but locked up so I did a hard reset with the power button. Upon restarting, I am greeted with the usual apple logo and load bar just below it but about halfway through I get the 'prohibitory' sign (circle with cross bar sign for no entry). I keep getting this restart after restart.

I formatted an external hard drive using another mac to perform as a boot up disk for Yosemite and plugged it into the macbook. I boot to that and *sometimes* am able to get to disk util. When there, the internal hardrive is not showing up at all... thus I can't do any disk repairs with this method.

The HDD is spinning, I confirmed this. It seems to be a read issue. Any thoughts on what I should try next?
Click to expand...

If the hard drive does not appear in Disk Utility it or the data cable has likely gone bad.
 
redheeler said:
If the hard drive does not appear in Disk Utility it or the data cable has likely gone bad.
Click to expand...

I couldn't get the internal HD to appear from my disk utility booted from an external HD so I just now tried an old Snow Leopard boot disk. From there, Disk util was able to locate the internal HD. I got the spinning wheel of death upon trying to go further. Just seemed like everything was moving very very slowly.
 
terzdesign said:
I couldn't get the internal HD to appear from my disk utility booted from an external HD so I just now tried an old Snow Leopard boot disk. From there, Disk util was able to locate the internal HD. I got the spinning wheel of death upon trying to go further. Just seemed like everything was moving very very slowly.
Click to expand...

Were you able to repair the drive from there?
 
My first thought would be the SATA cable. I've burned through several of those on my mid-2009 13" MBP. I had to do hard restarts pretty frequently because of a sleep/wake issue. Might be time to replace the HDD and the cable if they're both original.
 
KUguardgrl13 said:
My first thought would be the SATA cable. I've burned through several of those on my mid-2009 13" MBP. I had to do hard restarts pretty frequently because of a sleep/wake issue. Might be time to replace the HDD and the cable if they're both original.
Click to expand...

another forum mentioned that. I also have an imac same year and all. Is it possible to swap harddrives to get the data off of the macbook pro's HD? It would also allow me to see if the HD was busted.
 
terzdesign said:
another forum mentioned that. I also have an imac same year and all. Is it possible to swap harddrives to get the data off of the macbook pro's HD? It would also allow me to see if the HD was busted.
Click to expand...

I'm a hobbiest when it comes to this stuff, so I'm not sure about that :/ I don't have an iMac.
 
terzdesign said:
another forum mentioned that. I also have an imac same year and all. Is it possible to swap harddrives to get the data off of the macbook pro's HD? It would also allow me to see if the HD was busted.
Click to expand...

No, iMacs run 3.5" drives, MBPs 2.5"

ALL your symptoms point to HDD or cable. I'd swap the HDD first as if it turns out to be the cable you still have a drive that can be of use...cost is probably similar, both are very easy to change.
 
The prohibitory symbol means it's a software issue, not hardware. Specifically, with the introduction of kext signing in Yosemite, it could be a driver issue. The fact that you get the load bar means it's not a hard drive or cable issue.

I would read through this: https://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/

It has good information and you might try the steps outlined for rebuilding the kext files. If that doesn't work try re installing Yosemite.
 
update:

The last few days have been... well interesting. I took the MBP to the Genius Bar and the guy said it was very likely some bit of information in the OS that was off and not allowing the computer to load. He said a complete and utter clean install would fix the issue, so home I went to clear the HD of relevent data.

I picked up a USB > SATA cable and took out my internal HD and it showed up immediately when plugged in that way. I took all of the data off of it, put it back in the machine and ran a bootable disk to do the clean install. After that, no luck. Same thing.

so.... What the hell. Is it the cable? I'll take it back to Genius Bar tomorrow but I can't imagine what else it could be.
 
terzdesign said:
update:

The last few days have been... well interesting. I took the MBP to the Genius Bar and the guy said it was very likely some bit of information in the OS that was off and not allowing the computer to load. He said a complete and utter clean install would fix the issue, so home I went to clear the HD of relevent data.

I picked up a USB > SATA cable and took out my internal HD and it showed up immediately when plugged in that way. I took all of the data off of it, put it back in the machine and ran a bootable disk to do the clean install. After that, no luck. Same thing.

so.... What the hell. Is it the cable? I'll take it back to Genius Bar tomorrow but I can't imagine what else it could be.
Click to expand...

Definitely seems like the hard drive cable is at fault. Just to make sure, were you able to boot from it while it was attached using the adapter cable?
 
terzdesign said:
update:

The last few days have been... well interesting. I took the MBP to the Genius Bar and the guy said it was very likely some bit of information in the OS that was off and not allowing the computer to load. He said a complete and utter clean install would fix the issue, so home I went to clear the HD of relevent data.

I picked up a USB > SATA cable and took out my internal HD and it showed up immediately when plugged in that way. I took all of the data off of it, put it back in the machine and ran a bootable disk to do the clean install. After that, no luck. Same thing.

so.... What the hell. Is it the cable? I'll take it back to Genius Bar tomorrow but I can't imagine what else it could be.
Click to expand...

I think there was some confusion amongst us posters. IIRC, the prohibitory symbol is different from the question mark on startup. I know I was thinking of issues that relate to the question mark which are usually the hard drive cable or the hard drive itself.

freeskier93 said:
The prohibitory symbol means it's a software issue, not hardware. Specifically, with the introduction of kext signing in Yosemite, it could be a driver issue. The fact that you get the load bar means it's not a hard drive or cable issue.

I would read through this: https://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/

It has good information and you might try the steps outlined for rebuilding the kext files. If that doesn't work try re installing Yosemite.
Click to expand...

I think freeskier93 knows what they're talking about. Follow their advice and see where it takes you.

----------
simonsi said:
My mistake, I thought that was the ? symbol...
Click to expand...

I think we've got it reversed. The ? usually means HDD or SATA cable while the prohibitory symbol like "No Smoking" is something different.
 
Good grief. Now it boots to a grey screen with flashing folder/question mark icon...
 
I had a similar issue with my 13 inch 2009 mbp...

I tried a repair several times, but it never completed... I tried erasing the hdd and it would never complete...

I finally pulled it out and put it in my windows desktop. I erased it and formatted it for Windows. I found that I could copy files to it, but it was moving REALLY slow (I'm pretty sure I was seeing a kb/s transfer number)... I ended up giving up on it and buying a new hard drive and it is working fine. I then gave the computer to someone else... hope they don't have any more problems!
 
UPDATE:

Took the thing back to the Genius Bar and just had them swap in a new hard drive ribbon cable. This did the trick. The cable was only $18 but they charged me $60 total with labor. If you ask why I didn't just do it myselft, it's because Apple doesn't allow you to buy service parts without the actual service. Oh well, $60 is cheap.

Glad it's fixed. How on earth a cable that never sees movement goes bad is beyond me. Now off to add 16 gigs of ram to this sucker :)
 
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