Kari,
This comes up quite often and this fix has always worked for me. (I have run
this on at least 30 Macs where I work.) Simply stated, the flashing question
mark says that the computer cannot find the path to the hard disk's system
folder (or any other disk with a valid system folder). The fix is to run the
appropriate version of Drive Setup, an Apple utility that should be on your
hard drive, and also on every OS CD.
You do need to be able to start up from some disk with a valid system folder
on it, by inserting the disk in the drive and holding down the "C" key until
you see the message "Welcome to Macintosh". It can be a version of the OS or
a repair utility such as Norton Utilities. Once you get to the desktop, find
Drive Setup, probably in a utilities folder. Launch it, and it will search
for connected drives. The first one in the list should be your Hard Drive
(or whatever you have named it). Click once on it, then go to the Functions
menu at the top and choose Update Driver. You will get a message stating
that the new driver will not be available until after you restart your
computer. Click OK.
Go into your Control Panels folder from your Apple menu and double click on
the StartUp Disk control panel. (If you started up from a Norton Util disk,
there will be only a couple of control panels listed. This is normal.) When
you open up the StartUp disk control panel, click once on the name of your
hard disk then close the panel and Restart. Right after you hear the startup
chime, push the button on the CD drawer and the disk will eject. This will
ensure that you are starting up from the hard drive.
That should fix the flashing question mark problem. Now, every time you
install new software, run Drive Setup and this problem should not repeat.
(You don't have to startup from an external disk as long as you can startup
from the hard drive.)
For extra smoothing out of your computer's operation, you should also
rebuild the desktop file at this point. Then it wouldn't hurt to zap the
PRAM either. If you have a Norton Utilities disk, you could also check the
hard drive for fragmentation with Speed Disk. If the fragmentation is just
"light", I wouldn't bother running Speed Disk. But if it is "moderate" or
"heavy" of "severe", I would definitely defragment it, which Norton calls
"optimize". If you need help with any of these maintenance procedures, email
me off list. Sorry, everyone, that this is so long.
--
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