Startup to question mark folder sometimes

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Level 1

9 points

Startup to question mark folder sometimes

I've been having this problem and hopefully someone knows what is going on. Here is the pattern of events:

When I restart my mac it starts up to the question mark folder sign, I then start it up on recovery and go to disk utility - it doesn't show my mac disk (just has something like baseOSx) so there is nothing I can do there and I just click the restart button and the mac then restarts normally and works just fine (maybe a little slower than usual but it's older so maybe that's normal).

This is the same course of events I have to go through every time I want to start my mac up again, in that I have to start up to recovery mode, do nothing, but somehow next restart works normally.

I've read around and couldn't find any solutions (when I run disk utility first aid I don't get any errors), so I thought the solution to prolong the life of it for now would be to just not let it shut down. However, it seems like overnight it crashed and shut itself down because I had to go through the whole cycle again this morning.

I updated to Catalina about 2 weeks ago, but this problem just started two days ago.

My battery needs to be replaced but I'm plugged into power the whole time.

I was going to bring it into service but the apple stores in my area are not up and running yet or next appointment is in two weeks.

Does anyone have any idea what could be the problem? I can't even begin to try to fix the problem because I have no idea what could be going on.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jul 23, 2020 7:31 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

leroydouglas

Community+ 2024

Level 10

188,286 points

Jul 23, 2020 8:14 AM in response to runfast953

runfast953 wrote:

MacBook Pro 13in late 2013 running 10.15.6

First if you have not, it would be worth simply—

Try resetting NVRAM/PRAM http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

and

Try resetting the SMC https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

To continue if no resolve—

You can get a good look at your System config. for conflicts or issues, you can download/run this trusted utility https://etrecheck.com

If no glaring conflicts or issues...

Repair a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/disk-utility/repair-a-disk-dskutl1040/mac

Restore https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

Boot into Recovery (Command R) and from the dropdown menu: Utilities> Disk Utility>View run the First Aid on your Macintosh HD (and the "Macintosh HD-Data" volume as well if Catalina) If errors are found and repaired, run again until no errors reported.

If no issues found, I suspect erasing/reformatting the parent drive, reinstalling the macOS, and restore your user data—would be the go to way of resolving the issue. Disk Utility>View>Show All Devices> here you select your parent drive.

Internet Recovery: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

How to erase a disk for Mac - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496

How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

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Answer 2

Jul 23, 2020 7:37 AM in response to runfast953

>System Preferences>StartUp Disk

Highlite and select your Macintosh HD

If your Mac starts up to a question mark

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204323

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Answer 3

runfast953 Author

Level 1

9 points

Jul 23, 2020 10:04 AM in response to leroydouglas

Thanks for your suggestions! I was following all the steps until I got the disk utility in recovery. When I am able to get the mac up and running I see all the appropriate disks and can run first aid on them (no problems there), however when I open in recovery mode there are no disks (I can't do any repairs there). When I go to reinstall Os, I can't get it to work because it doesn't see the disk and I can't select one for the process to continue. What could be causing this problem of the disks not being seen while in recovery mode?

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