[WinMac] RE: Flashing Question Mark On Startup

John W. McCarthy(jwmcmac[at]flash.net)
Wed, 17 Mar 1999 01:53:05 -0600

This response will be in-line

This is redundant information to most of you, but a little redundancy
can be helpful sometimes.

Here goes . . .

>
> Subject:
> Flashing Question Mark On Startup
> Date:
> Mon, 15 Mar 1999 15:04:02 -0600
> From:
> Theresa Heroff <theresa@commandeur.com>
>
>
>
> Good afternoon,
>
> We are running AppleShare IP 6.1 with Mac OS 8.5 and have Windows file
> sharing enabled.
>
> Two of our PC users were unable to save, retrieve files etc. from the file
> server. When I further investigated the problem, even though Window's file
> sharing was enabled in the set up panel, it was showing as not enabled in
> the status panel on the web and file server. The previous night's back up
> (using Retrospect) did not run as well with a network communication error.
>
> I then did a restart of the server hoping to reinitialize communications,
> that is when I received the flashing question mark. Even though everything
> seems to be stable now, I do not feel comfortable about the flashing
> question mark.

<***

Based on the problems as described . . . a general run through of some
typical Mac Trouble Shooting procedures . . .
  

During the time the Mac is looking for the startup drive, it puts up a
flashing question mark. If you are booting from a local attached drive,
the flashing question mark should not last long or really should not be
seen at all. If you are booting from a drive in the external SCSI
chain, you could have a corrupted driver or various other SCSI related
problems (especially if you are booting from a Jaz drive -- update to
the latest Driver).

••• The only thing I think you might need in your case is:

It appears to me that you need to place your Finder preferences in the
trash and restart. Can't hurt . . . might help. The Finder's
preferences rebuild themselves during the next start up.

Any crash or freeze up while networking/printing often appears to leave
your Finder's preferences in a devastated condition. Many
communication/printing related problems seem to repair themselves if you
trash the finder preferences and restart.

The Finder is the most powerful and the most fragile part of the Mac OS
and apparently communications really mess around with the Finder's
preferences.

Although Mac OS 8.5.1 appears to be the most stable Mac OS I've used,
the Finder has perhaps become a bit more fragile . . . but very easy to
repair. IMO (in my opinion) trashing the Finder's preferences would be
a good start up repair after any crash, especially if you could
automatically restore some previously saved settings that you "knew"
were good.

Hey, you CAN. Just save a previous "good" copy of the finder
preferences as a stuffed file within the System:Preferences folder.
After trashing the old one, unstuff a copy of the "good" Finder
preferences -- then restart.

After trashing the Finder preferences, go the the control panels and re-set:

the Mouse
the Views or Appearance (depending if you are running OS 7.x or 8.x)

••• The rest of these suggestions are general fixit thingys in the Mac world:

Sometimes, but not often, it is useful to zap the PRAM (Parameter Ram),
especially after adding or changing your hardware, internally or on the
SCSI chain. You can use TechTool to do this (one of the free versions
later than 1.1.7).

Another method to Zap the Pram is to hold down the Command-Option-P-R
keys at the beginning of a restart -- When using this method, the
computer will let out with a "dönnnnnngggggg" sound (usually) to
indicate the PRAM was reset.

After Zapping, go the the control panels and re-set:

• the 601 Processor Upgrade -- this can be the most difficult and time
consuming part of Zapping.
-- if you have the 601 PPC upgrade on an old 68040 Mac it will start up
as a 68k Mac until set back to "on".
-- During the initial restart you will have to hold down the shift key
until you see "Welcome to the Mac -- Extensions off".
-- Restart after you have set the 601 Processor Upgrade to "on" allowing
it to start up normally.
• the Date & Time -- the 2nd most important Control panel to re-set,
especially time-zone.
• the Startup disk (if not the internal drive already, which is the default)
• the General Controls
• the Memory

Wouldn't hurt to rebuild the desktop, using TechTool. This is sometimes
necesary after installing or trashing a bunch of files. The Finder may
lose track of where everthing is and a "proper" rebuilding of the
desktop will help it get back to normal.

Another, less reliable, method for rebuilding the desktop is to hold
down the Command-Option keys immediately at the end of the parade of
icons during start up. A diologue window will ask you if you want to
rebuild the desktop of each attached drive, one after the other. Hit
the Okay button to rebuild your start up drive and any others you want
to rebuild. Hit the cancel button for those that you do not want to
rebuild. Go get a coffee if you have a big drive(s). It asks for each
and every drive that is attached "after" the previous one is finished,
so don't go too far away.

And of course, running Norton Disk Doctor 4.5.1 (the latest version, I
think) is almost always a good thing (I recommend running it with the
Virtual Memory off -- and even better -- with everything off which
requires a restart with the shift key held down until you get the
"Welcome . . . Extensions Off" dialogue window).

The latest versions of Disk First Aid (versions 8.2 and/or 8.5.1) are
great. They even work on the Startup drive and the Drive from which the
application is running -- great new features.

***>

>
> Any help/guidance concerning a flashing question mark on startup would be
> greatly appreciated.
>
> Thank you.
> Theresa
> Commandeur LLC
>

reply was from:

Patrick Kelly McCarthy

* Windows-MacOS Cooperation List *

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Tue Mar 16 1999 - 23:53:14 PST