How To Fix a Flashing Question Mark Folder on Mac

Here is a guide on how to troubleshoot when your Mac computer starts up with a flashing folder and question mark.

[darrin]

I literally watched 50 videos and nobody said anything about holding down the option key to see my hard pop up :/ Thank you so much man you just saved my life

[jenniferfurlano]

It works! I don't know why it took me 3 years to do this. My Mac desktop sat on my desk for three years. I didn't want to touch it so I bought a new laptop. My laptop started to age so I thought I should check my mac and followed your instruction. Bingo! It works!! Thanks! What really helped was that one of the comments below saying hit the control and R as you hear the sound. I am deaf so I missed the video . After the comment I read, I touch my monitor and feel for the sound. It did it! Thank you! My Reno 911 was stuck in there for three years! god!

[johnjosmith]

dude i cannot thank you ENOUGH. Ugh. i was just about to format my entire computer without a back up but stumbled upon this vid in a last search in despair. it was the 'hold option key on start up' that helped. i searched high and low on apple site for solutions but i never saw that. so thanks again, life saver.

[cecep]

a year ago i was dumber and tried to restart my Mac thinking nothing would happen .. i was wrong 💀, I went to a lot of websites even Apple’s website and a lot of YouTube videos and nothing would work, i gave up after a lot of research and never touched it. Until literally today at 11:13 p.m, I’m about to start my first year at college in 2 weeks and desperately needed my laptop to work and came upon this video and IM ALREADY INSTALLING THE OS X!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

[denzelwashingmachine]

I work for a school district and we have seen this issue on several laptops. It can also be a bad hard drive cable. We saw a big jump in this issue with the 2012 model laptops. They were notorious for just randomly going to the flashing folder screen while they were in use. It is a fairly simple replacement, so it's worth considering.

[jermainsmith]

Youre instructions were spot on!! Thanks for the clear and concise video!!! Saved me a lot of money and time by not taking it to Apple. 👍

[alexmunday-paul]

Your voice and background music go well together. So relaxing.

[beretgascon]

Thank you - this tut helped me fixed a non-booting Macbook Air, my daughter was delighted she didn't lose any course work! (of course she wouldn't have been worried if she'd backed it up, but that's teenagers for you)

[MichealTaylor]

Hi Tim,
Thank so much for this video, this allowed me to restore my computer from a flashing folder of gray to a correctly updated Sierra. your step by step instructions were perfect. Holding 9th We option key down while turning it on got me to the right place. Thanks a million, we now have a working Mac again which we desperately needed.

[kofifreddie]

It worked great✌️. The internet installation usually takes about 30min to an hour depending on how fast your link is..Don’t panic just relax and follow the instructions

[daniellepatrice]

Thank you for this. I almost lost my shit. I was trying to reset my laptop and I thought I broke it. Appreciate it all ☺️☺️

[madelineforster]

I just spent 4 hours on the phone with apples and this just helped me in 1:31 more than they did in four hours. You're a life saver. Thank you!!

[evanr]

This helped me out so much!!! I though I was going to have to bring it in to apple which would have charged me a fortune!!!! Thank you again so much!!!

[innovateedu-consult]

This is a very helpful tutorial. Definitely the best piece of information is holding down the power and option key for internet recovery

[Flowvilett]

my heart went straight to my ass my heart is still heavy

[isaidwithcheese]

Man all I did was open up the laptop, unplug the hard drive and then plug it back in securely and my problem was fixed. I’m so glad I did not lose all my projects. Please try this step before wiping everything off :)

[lizzbrown]

Lol mac crashed during taking my finals...trying to fix xD

[ribblopez]

Thank you so much! I HOPE you see this message. You helped me more than a live Apple agent could. Sad asf.

[lediaj]

I have this issue but I have the MacBookPro 2012 showing me a different scene do you have a video on that ?

[TiffanyDavisRustam]

Quick and simple fix, just what I needed, thanks!