
Select Restore and let Disk Utility do its work.

You’ll be asked to create a name for the disk and select a destination, which should be your Mac’s internal drive if possible. From there, select Macintosh HD from the left-hand column of disks and then click the Restore button. From here, select Disk Utility then clicks Continue in the lower right corner of the window that opens. You can do this by restarting your Mac and holding down Command+R when you hear the startup chime (or see the Apple logo). The first step in resolving an issue where macOS doesn’t show up at startup is to reset the default startup disk.

Restarting your Mac is one of the basic steps for solving problems, especially when it doesn’t load normally, so you should start with this step first. How to Fix Mac Startup with Question Mark Folder?

If the Macintosh HD was moved to an external volume using macOS Recovery, the files on it will still not be visible. Any files stored on it will not appear to be available once booted back up to the normal desktop either, including invisible files.DS_Store and Thumbs.DB (these are hidden by default). A usable, corrupted hard drive that sometimes shows up as a white or gray screen at startup or while rebooting. If there’s a problem with this partition, you’ll see the “macOS could not be installed/started on your computer” error message when you try to boot into Recovery Mode (while holding down Command+R). The Mac’s EFI partition is responsible for starting up your computer.

Interference from third-party software such as backup utilities or encryption tools.“Macintosh HD” with a big white question mark where files and folders should be can mean only one thing: like everything in IT, it can be fixed 🙂 Why do I get the mac question mark folder?Ī variety of things can cause a Mac to throw up this folder with an ominous question-mark icon including: If you’ve never seen anything like this before, it’s easy to think that your computer is probably on its way out, but let’s not jump to conclusions yet.
