Home Forums Hardware Mac Desktops & Notebooks Getting question mark on mac laptop

A folder with a question mark comes up with my macbook.
Have no idea what to do.
One big problem is that is so slow in booting up and down, I can't tell where I am.
How many seconds to boot up / down. I press power button for 8 seconds, nothing happen.
Should I press for 12 seconds?
It has a CD in there, wrong CD, which I cannot eject either. It's a total mess.
Any help appreciate. thanks.
There is a copy of Windows on the machine. that may be the culprit.

A flashing question mark appears when you start your Mac. A standard trick for ejecting a CD is to hold the mouse down (in your case, the trackpad buttons) during startup.

Jon, thanks, great link:

Ok, I got it to boot into the native Mac OS.
I now want to run disc utility- but here is new issue:
I hold down C, after restarting, but the disc OS of CD does not come up. the computer is ignoring it and just rebooting into the native OS.

I can think of a few possible explanations:

1. Did you hold C long enough? You shouldn't release it until you see the Apple logo and then you must be patient because it takes considerably longer to boot from the CD than from the hard drive.
2. Are you using a system disc that came with a different computer? If that's the case, it won't work. You need either the disc that came with your computer or a generic (black label) disc. Also, you cannot (generally speaking) boot from an OS version that is earlier than the one that was originally installed.
3. Have you tried invoking the Startup Manager? Insert the CD and reboot while pressing and holding Option. Release the key when you see a choice of startup discs, select the CD and press Return

You can run the equivalent of Disk Utility's Repair Disk without the CD by running fsck in Single User Mode. Start up while pressing and holding Command and S simultaneously. Release the keys when you see writing on the screen. After the writing has stopped loading, type /sbin/fsck -fy (leave a space between fsck and -fy) and press Return. When finished, type reboot and press Return.

Here's a caveat: The link that I provided is slightly inaccurate in its information about how to access Disk Utility. For a better description that takes into account OS differences, read Mac OS X - Using Disk Utility to Repair a Disk. If you are using 10.6, the procedure is the same as for 10.4 and 10.5.

Jon, thanks,
here is update, what would you do?
Holding down option on reboot does not work, there is no option to choose a CD even though the CD is in and mounted ok.

Rebooting with C key held down continously until boot up in native Mac OS not working, not bringing up the CD OS. thanks.

HOld on, had wrong disc in, will ok, I think!