Few things are as frustrating as trying to start your Mac and ending up with the dreaded Mac folder with a question mark. You’ve probably tried using keyboard shortcuts like CTRL+R, CTRL+Option+R, or Shift+CTRL+Option+R, but you still get the flashing folder icon on startup.
While this may strike fear into your heart as a Mac user, there are known causes for it, and tried and tested solutions that will help you get your Mac back to normalcy.
Oct 08, 2017 Go disk utilty and create a disk this time clicking + and make a drive calling it Macintosh HD with the format Mac OS Extended. The fix is your removing the APFS system which is what is confusing the drive which for some reason apple can't figure out them self. Then just click install Mac OS and you should be good to go. With macOS 10.10 Yosemite Apple introduced new App Extensions to add custom functionality for example to Finder. Since version 2.3.401 (733) Boxcryptor for macOS, the integration of Boxcryptor into Finder is implemented as a Finder Sync extension as recommended by Apple. The MATLAB startup folder is the folder you are in when you get the MATLAB prompt. To change the default startup folder, see MATLAB Startup Folder. If MATLAB fails to start due to a problem with required system components such as Java ® software, then diagnostics run automatically. The software advises you of the problem and offers suggestions. For me, this option failed after step 6, with macOS refusing to delete and archive the account. I moved on to try to the next option. Use Disk Utility to archive the user folder as a disk image.
Follow along to find out why you’re getting the folder with the question mark in the middle of the screen, and how you can resolve the problem. While this is issue is more prevalent among older Macs, we shall try to address the same for new Mac models as well.
Also on Guiding Tech
#macbook
Click here to see our macbook articles pageCauses of Flashing Mac Folder with Question Mark
There are several reasons why the folder with a question mark appears on your Mac’s screen:
- Your Mac can’t find a bootable volume. That means it can’t find its startup disk, so it can’t boot or start up. Probably you previously started up your Mac from an external disk and later unplugged it, or its hard drive just failed terribly, so it’s having trouble locating its system folder or boot directory.
- Corrupt macOS.
- Corrupt system files.
- Hard disk drive has failed catastrophically.
- The external disk you boot from may be off or disconnected.
- The ribbon cable connecting the drive to the motherboard may be damaged. This cable sits between the bottom case and optical drive, and if the case has indentations in the same area, the cable may be the problem.
Also on Guiding Tech
How To Create a Bootable Backup of Your Mac for Free
Read MoreBoot Your Mac From an Install DVD (For Older Macs)
This process forces your Mac to boot from the install DVD placed in the optical drive. For that, you must follow these steps:
Step 1: Place the install DVD that came with your Mac in the optical drive and reboot. You can use that disc, or if you have a later macOS version, use a newer disc for the same purpose.
Step 2: Once you hear the boot chime, hold down C key on your keyboard or the Option key until you see the Install Disk or Apple logo show up.
Note: Boot from the recovery partition if you’re on 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion or 10.9 Mavericks, and then repair the OS 10.7 or 10.8 partition using Disk Utility.Step 3: When your Mac starts up, choose the language you’ll use, press Return on your keyboard, and an Installation window will open. Ignore this window and click Utilities and then click Disk Utility.
Step 4: If you see your hard disk on the list, click your macOS partition for the hard drive, and then select First Aid tab.
Step 5: Next, run Repair Disk. To enable this button, click on your hard drive’s macOS partition. If this fixes any issues, run it all over again until you see the green OK, and then run Repair Permissions.
Step 6: Finally, use the Startup Disk to select your hard drive to restart your Mac from the hard drive. If it’s not recognized under Disk Utility, it’s probably dead.
Also on Guiding Tech
How to Sync Folders Anywhere on Mac with Multiple Backup Services like Dropbox, Google Drive and More
Read MorePut Your Mac in Recovery Mode
If you’re trying to boot from your Mac’s internal drive, you need to shut down the computer and then start it up while holding down Command+R keys until the globe or Apple logo appears. That will put your Mac in Recovery Mode, and then you can change the startup disk by selecting the option from the Apple Menu.
Recovery Mode comes handy when your Mac won’t boot normally because the startup disk is damaged or corrupted.
That could be caused by corrupt files or mild power surges you’re not aware of, but it fixes the issue without you having to go to extreme lengths, such as performing a reinstall of your macOS.
Note: You can boot using an external Mac startup disk or bootable installer if macOS Recovery doesn’t work.Replace the Disk
If the Mac folder with a question mark appears because of your disk has failed, the only thing you can do is to replace the disk and use the time capsule or another backup device you’ve been using to recover your data to the new disk.
Backup Data and Reinstall macOS
If Disk Utility can’t repair your startup disk, you may have to reformat it. Before doing that, take a backup of any important data from the disk before erasing everything stored on it. You can take the steps below to take a backup of your data to an external drive if you don’t have a recent data backup for your startup disk:
Step 1: Connect an external drive that’s similar in size or larger than your startup disk. Erase the external drive using macOS Recovery and then install macOS to it. Select the external disk that you want to erase, not your startup disk.
Step 2: Once macOS is installed, your Mac will restart automatically from the external drive. When you see the Setup Assistant, choose the option you want to use to move data from another disk, and select the startup disk on your Mac as the source from which to migrate data.
Step 3: After migration, follow the setup assistant instructions to the end, and when you see your desktop, confirm that all your data is present on the external drive.
Step 4: Erase your startup disk using macOS Recovery and reinstall macOS (don’t select your external drive). After erasing the disk and installing macOS, your Mac will restart automatically, and the setup assistant will appear. Copy your data to your startup disk by selecting the option to migrate data from a Time Machine backup or another disk, in this case your external drive.
Note: If you can’t erase the startup disk or reinstall macOS, take your Mac for repair to an Apple Genius or authorized service provider.Get Your Mac Back
We hope you now know what to do when you find the flashing Mac folder with a question mark on your screen. Try the fixes above and let us know what worked for you.
Next up:Want to reduce boot time for your Windows PC? Our next article shows you how to do that using Quick Startup.
Create Folder Yahoo Mail
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Read NextHow to Use Quick Startup to Reduce Windows Boot TimeAlso See#apple #folder
Did You Know
Thunderbolt 3 is a data and video transfer protocol and is developed by Intel.
More in Mac
Top 5 Fixes for iMessages Not Syncing on Your Mac
Let’s say you finished up a wonderful GUI application using wxPython. How do you share it with the world? This is always the dilemma when you finish an amazing program. Fortunately, there are several ways you can share your code. If you want to share your code with other developers, than Github or a similar website is definitely a good way to do. I won’t be covering using Git or Mercurial here. Instead what you will learn here is how to turn your application into an executable.
By turning your code into an executable, you can allow a user to just download the binary and run it without requiring them to download Python, your source code and your dependencies. All of those things will be bundled up into the executable instead.
There are many tools you can use to generate an executable:
You will be using PyInstaller in this tutorial. The main benefit to using PyInstaller is that it can generate executables for Windows, Mac and Linux. Note that it does not support cross-compiling. What that means is that you cannot run PyInstaller on Linux to create a Windows executable. Instead, PyInstaller will only create an executable for the OS that it is ran on. In other words, if you run PyInstaller on Windows, it will create a Windows executable only.
Installing PyInstaller
Installing the PyInstaller package is nice and straightforward. All you need is pip.
Here is how you would install PyInstaller to your system Python:
You could also install PyInstaller to a virtual Python environment using Python’s venv module or the virtualenv package.
Generating an Executable
The nice thing about PyInstaller is that it is very easy to use out of the box. All you need to do is run the `pyinstaller` command followed by the path to the main file of the application that you want to convert to an executable.
Here is a non-working example:
If the PyInstaller application is not found, you may have to specify a full path to it. By default, PyInstaller installs to Python’s **Scripts** sub-folder, which is going to be in your system Python folder or in your virtual environment.
Let’s take one of the simple applications from my upcoming book and turn it into an executable. For example, you could use image_viewer_slideshow.py from chapter 3:
If you wanted to turn it into an executable, you would run the following:
Make sure that when you run this command, your current working directory is the one that contains the script you are converting to an executable. PyInstaller will be creating its output in whatever the current working directory is.
When you run this command, you should see something like this in your terminal:
PyInstaller will create two folders in the same folder as the script that you are converting called **dist** and **build**. The **dist** folder is where you will find your executable if PyInstaller completes successfully. There will be many other files in the **dist** folder besides your executable. These are files that are required for your executable to run.
Now let’s try running your newly created executable. When I ran my copy, I noticed that a terminal / console was appearing behind my application.
This is normal as the default behavior of PyInstaller is to build your application as if it were a command-line application, not a GUI.
You will need to add the –noconsole flag to remove the console:
Now when you run the result, you should no longer see a console window appearing behind your application.
It can be complicated to distribute lots of files, so PyInstaller has another command that you can use to bundle everything up into a single executable. That command is `–onefile`. As an aside, a lot of the commands that you use with PyInstaller have shorter aliases. For example, there is a shorter alias for `–noconsole` that you can also use called: -w. Note the single dash in `-w`.
So let’s take that information and have PyInstaller create a single file executable with no console: