Flashing Question Mark on a Floppy Disk on boot

[torres]

I have a PowerBook G4 running OS X (I'm not sure that matters here) and I having a problem getting it started.

When I boot the machine I get a flashing question mark icon on a floppy disk and the machine never starts. I thought this might have been related to the startup disk, but I started the machine holding down the option key and selected my OS and still the same thing happened. I also tried resetting the PRAM but that didn't help either.

This all started happening after I had to do a hard shut down of the system because of some network problems that crashed my machine.

Thanks in advance for your help.

John

 

[adambyte]

You are correct. For some reason or another, your 'Book is having a problem finding a system folder on your hard disk. If you have the System CD that came with your system, insert that CD, and hopefully your Mac will startup using that. Then, hopefully, you can use Mac OS 9's Disk First Aid, or Mac OS X's Disk Utility to fix it.

If you need more specific help, I'd be glad to explain the operation in detail