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Dave Garrett

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 17, 2014
2
0
I have tried restarting and restarting my computer I held down the option/alt key and then this blank white screen comes up with a flashing looking folder image with a question mark on it? does any one know what this means and any one can help me get back to my osx maverics screen?
 
Check out the Apple Support

Usually means your computer can't find a viable operating system
Typically either your HD is bad or you have damaged/deleted the OS
Could be caused by a Bootcamp install gone bad as well
 
Flashing folder with question mark

This happened to me today; Turned on the 2013 MBA and got the Grey screen and then the Folder with a Question Mark slowly flashing. I've search all over the net, tried a clean install but the MBA is not seeing the hard drive. Scheduled an appt. at the Apple Store. To wit a few points I have to pass along.

1) Make sure you have a copy of your serial number written down. Its very hard to read the tiny serial number on the back of the MBA. Why because small scratches don't help you read the tiny writing. Which brings me to point two.

2) A shell cover will save you from minor scratches i.e. on or near the serial number

3) I would be a good idea to have a recovery compact flash or CD rom. Its kinda tough when everything is down. Even though this didn't work for me due to a faulty hard drive. It would have saved me if I only had corruption.
 
3) I would be a good idea to have a recovery compact flash or CD rom. Its kinda tough when everything is down. Even though this didn't work for me due to a faulty hard drive. It would have saved me if I only had corruption.

I'm sure you meant a faulty SSD, since Macbook Airs don't have hard drives. I'm sure there are instances of complete drive failure where you can't access it at all, but normally you can just press cmd-R at boot to access OS X Recovery. If the SSD is toast, it won't matter that you can boot to a recovery disk, since it would need replacement anyway.

In the case of a damaged OS X partition, you should be able to boot to the separate recovery partition with no problems in order to repair it.
 
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