Why is there only a white screen on Mac start up?

Asked by tan253 (2958

) April 12th, 2013 from iPhone

My computer boots and then it’s just the white screen, after about 15 minutes a folde with a question mark appears but that’s it?
I’ve tried starting holding the shift key and P R option and command but nothing.
Any ideas?

It’s a MacBook Pro unsure of operating system.

Mac computer

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4 Answers

I also just put in the CD to restart the whole system but it won’t even read the CD and now I can’t get the CD out!!!!

tan253 (2958

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Make sure everything is UNPLUGGED before you start the process including wireless mouse, battery charger, external HD….
Have you tried holding the start button down for 15 seconds?
Then try the Shift, Command, P and R, for 15 seconds wait for the second chime.

Tropical_Willie (31496

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just take it to the apple store and some kind of genius will figure out whats wrong.

Crumpet (1805

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Well, it can’t find the harddrive. Try holding down C when you boot to force it to boot from the optical drive and if it boots see if disk utility sees the disk.

asdfg11 (6

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