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1. 

   sterho
   

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   I recently upgraded my mac, now what it does is starts with the world in a box that is flashing on and off, then a folder with the ? mark alternates with the mac blue smile face then it goes to the apple trademark in the center of a gray screen. It won't do anything else. Please help. RS

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   Posted 1 month ago #
2. 

   macmend
   

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   Apple Guru

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   This means it cannot find the system folder, or the system folder is corrupt or not "blessed".
   What did you upgrade too and from, which mac do you have.

   As you cant start up your best bet is to run the install disk again, but don't install just run the Disk Utility and try running 'disk repair'. I would also fix permissions as well from the same utility.

   If these appear to fix anything, try starting up again.

   The next thing would be to use a disk utility like diskwarrior to check your set up

   "Diskwarrior 4.1 (Intel Mac/Leopard)" (Alsoft)

   Last resort is what is called archive and install

   See this article here for an understanding of what this means and what it does:

   http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1710

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   Posted 1 month ago #
3. 

   sterho
   

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   Thanks for the information. I did do the disk repair and it said something like my keys out of order and that their were errors and they couldn't be fixed. I tried to reinstall and when I get to SELECT A DESTINATION, there is no listed volumes to install so I can't go any further. My computer is a MAC PowerBook G4 and I am running Tiger 10.4. A couple of months back I was able to get high speed internet here at home so I decided to upgrade. I don't exactly remember what the upgrades were. I guess I should have left my computer alone, it was working just fine. Any other help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks RS

   Posted 1 month ago #
4. 

   macmend
   

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   Apple Guru

   Reputation:149

    

   OK you have errors that cant be fixed, I think at these stage DIsk Warrior is your best bet, otherwise its wipe everything and start again

   Posted 1 month ago #
5. 

   sterho
   

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   Thanks, I will try that. RS

   Posted 1 month ago #
6. 

   sterho
   

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   I have disk warrior on my mac now. It has completed the rebuilding the directory. It now tells me THE NEW DIRECTORY CANNOT REPLACE THE ORIGINAL DIRECTORY BECAUSE OF A DISK MALFUNCTION. So what do I do now. It does show all the things that it has fixed. (To long of list to type). The button for the replace button is not highlighted so I am not able to choose to that? As you can tell I am not a techy person, just love my mac. Any suggestions? RS

   Posted 1 month ago #
7. 

   macmend
   

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   I would try again, before running the file checks with DW run a hardware disk check, A disk malfunction in DW usually means there are bad blocks on the disk that DW is having trouble writing to and cataloguing.

   Did you have much space on your disk.

   However if there is a disk malfunction this could mean that the disk hardware itself is problematic, do you have things backed up

   When diskwarrior produces a disk too long to type this is a bad sign.

   I am sorry this has had to happen to you. We need an article in the blog about what to do before upgrading your mac. It may be you had problems before the upgrade and then the upgrade made everything worse.

   COMPLETE SOLUTION:

   can your mac go to target disk mode (you press T at start up and a firewire synmbol will appear on the screen.

   You then connect your mac to another mac that also has an external hard disk attached, using carbon copy cloner you clone your mac to the external hard disk. Run disk warrior over the external hard disk to find any errors. Then reinitialise your hard disk using the write zeros option as this re catalogues the bad blocks on your disk, then reinstall the latest version of the mac OS giving you a clean vanilla system.

   Then attaching the external hard drive to your mac and using the Migration Assistant utility you import all applications and documents settings etc from the clone of your old system, but hopefully leave the problems behind.

   Posted 1 month ago #

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