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Urgent Help With Boot Up

R

rosler28

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 23, 2008
26
0
Hi everyone

I would really appreciate some urgent help here.

My son was round yesterday and was using my MB Air. He was listening to some music off some site and who knows what else he did.

I booted up this morning and all seemed fine. I walked away for 5 mins and when I came back there was a message on the screen saying it needed to reboot. As I couldn't do anything it had to be reboote

d. All it went to was a folder with a question mark. I have some stuff on an external Hard Drive (not a lot and I have never tried it) and the snow Leopard installation disk, however I do not have the original disk that came with the laptop 18 months or so ago.

I have searches various threads but nothing seems to work for me.

The only thing that has sort of worked is booting with the external CD drive with the Snow Leopard CD in it. I can go into the Disk Utility and it shows the external DVD drive plus a 79.68 Gb drive (which I presume is the Hard Drive) which is not mounted.)

I have tried a repair but it says it can't repair this disk.

Can any one please help?
 
What you saw was probably a Kernel Panic, often software related.
106227_3.jpg

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1392

You can use the Snow Leopard DVD to install the Mac OS fresh and new, you can even Archive the old system and user data and Install a new Mac OS.

What do you mean by "plus a 79.68GB drive, which I presume is the HDD, which is not mounted"?
Do you mean the internal HDD or the external HDD?
 
rosler28 said:
All it went to was a folder with a question mark.
Click to expand...

A folder with a flashing question mark means that your MBA cannot find the system software. In other words, for whatever reason it is not recognizing the internal hard disk and/or the OS X installation on it.

The only thing that has sort of worked is booting with the external CD drive with the Snow Leopard CD in it. I can go into the Disk Utility and it shows the external DVD drive plus a 79.68 Gb drive (which I presume is the Hard Drive) which is not mounted.)

I have tried a repair but it says it can't repair this disk.
Click to expand...

This is not a good sign. Does it give you any specific error when it reports that it cannot repair the drive?

It could be that your internal hard disk (hardware) has failed.
 
spinnerlys said:
What you saw was probably a Kernel Panic, often software related.
106227_3.jpg

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1392

You can use the Snow Leopard DVD to install the Mac OS fresh and new, you can even Archive the old system and user data and Install a new Mac OS.

What do you mean by "plus a 79.68GB drive, which I presume is the HDD, which is not mounted"?
Do you mean the internal HDD or the external HDD?
Click to expand...

Yes it was the kernel panic. As no other hard drive is connected I guess the 79.68Gb drive is the HDD.

I have had a look at the link and still am not getting anywhere. How can I do a fresh OS install when I don't have the MacBook air original disk?

many thanks again.
 
That is if there is nothing physically wrong with the hard disk and it allows you to format it.

If it were me and it DID allow this I'd still really want to figure out just what entirely hosed the former OS X install to the point that it was entirely lost and irreparable out of thin air.

Best of luck with it.
 
spinnerlys said:
You can use the Snow Leopard Upgrade DVD for a fresh installation, there is no need for any other.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the help guys.

Further problems:

In the Mac OS X Installer there my HDD is not shown in the window where you select a disk to install the OS.

I guess this means that mine has had it and I can not go any further?
 
rosler28 said:
Thanks for the help guys.

Further problems:

In the Mac OS X Installer there my HDD is not shown in the window where you select a disk to install the OS.

I guess this means that mine has had it and I can not go any further?
Click to expand...

This is what I was afraid of. :confused:

Just to be sure you should go back to Disk Utility and choose the internal hard disk and then Partition. Try to erase the old partition if it is still showing up and create a new one and then go back to the Snow Leopard installer again.

The Snow Leopard installer should see that hard disk though and offer to do this for you. This, coupled with the kernel panic and sudden disappearance of your prior file system leads me to be very suspicious of potential hard disk failure. :(
 
SaSaSushi said:
This is what I was afraid of. :confused:

Just to be sure you should go back to Disk Utility and choose the internal hard disk and then Partition. Try to erase the old partition if it is still showing up and create a new one and then go back to the Snow Leopard installer again.

The Snow Leopard installer should see that hard disk though and offer to do this for you. This, coupled with the kernel panic and sudden disappearance of your prior file system leads me to be very suspicious of potential hard disk failure. :(
Click to expand...

Hey many thanks for the help and yes my Air is working again.

I partitioned the drive, loaded Snow Leopard and hey presto.

I had a Time Capsule backup from about 3 months ago, put that on and everything is restored. Yes, I lost some stuff but TC worked a treat.

Once again, many thanks to everyone.
 
I wouldn't bother about it. I have had that twice I think, once on my eMac, once on my iMac, but after restarting never saw it again.
 
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