# [SOLVED] Mac Laptop - Flashing Folder on Boot



## AlMujtahid (Nov 7, 2008)

My boss has a Mac laptop. I connectd a Lacie external USB drive to it and started copying files onto the drive. No problems, everything was going smoothly. Then t computer just froze up. I could move the mouse around, but could not do anything. It was just a colorful, spinning wheel.

I shut down the laptop by pressing the power button. I know it is a No-No, but I got no response. Now when I boot up the laptop it just freezes on a grey screen with a flashing folder with a ? in the middle.


----------



## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

*Re: Mac Laptop - Flashing Folder on Boot*

The flashing folder means that it can't find the OS. So if you still have the drive plugged in it may be trying to boot from that. The other thing it may be is that if it's an older Mac the hard drive may have died. Doing a drive copy is intensive on the drive. The way to tell that is if you have the OS install disks that came with it and boot from the disk and then see if the hard drive shows up. If not, then the drive is bad.


----------



## AlMujtahid (Nov 7, 2008)

*Re: Mac Laptop - Flashing Folder on Boot*

Thank you. Yeah i hecked around and found that to bethe case. It is not an older Mac - about a year. We took to where we bought it for them to take care of. I am mostly familiar with PCs. 

Thanks again.


----------



## joshualevett (Nov 26, 2008)

My drive doesn't show up for me to re-install my software, what can i do? I have a Mac Mini, will it be expensive to repair!?


----------

