Chosen Solution
MY beloved iMac will not start up at all and I get a flashing “file” symbol with a question mark in it. When I use the start up dvd roms to get it to start the hdd is not shown in the disk utilities menu and also the hdd is making odd noises - is my computer completely had it’s day at 16 months old!?
The question mark in the folder means that your computer can’t find a system folder. Since Disk Utilities cannot find the drive, it’s a failed hard drive. These use SATA hard drives and you might consider upgrading it when replaced. There doesn’t appear to be a teardown for this model, but most of this series is the same. I’ll try to find one that will help you. Here’s the 20" teardown that should help you: iMac Intel 20" EMC 2266 Hard Drive Replacement
I think we just had a similar problem. The answer was a firmware password was set. To boot you need to use the option key and enter the password. Here’s the URL to explain in detail. Ralph http://www.macworld.com/article/145418/2…
I have the same problem, sometimes the primary partion appeears, sometimes nope i boot from snow leopard utility and in the disk utility the disk just appears like “media” whitout a brand, capacity or something else when reboot the machine, everythings is ok, or sometimes i need to press key “D” for diagnostic but everythings its ok now, i proceed to open the iMac 24 8,1
