Solve It! When Your Macintosh Won't Start Up

Welcome to every Macintosh user's worst nightmare. You turn on your Macintosh, and nothing happens. Or maybe all that happens is that your screen turns dark except for a ominous-looking Sad Mac icon. Or maybe you keep getting system crashes before the startup sequence is over.

If any of these things happens to you, don't panic. All is not lost—at least, not yet. You are about to go on a tour of the startup sequence, stopping at every place where something can go wrong and learning what to do in each case. You will soon see that the vast majority of startup problems can be completely and easily fixed right from your keyboard.