[Jayems]

So it's probably not as well known as the red ring of death, but my work computer has fallen victim to the flashing question mark folder of death (imac 20").

My comp has been on the fritz for the last few months, so much so that I've had to stop turning it off out of fear that it wouldn't boot up again. Anyway, it always started back up after a few tries and I managed to backup 95% of my important things.

Having said that, anyone ever experience this and have success at getting it booted back up?

Having read up on it, the issue appears to be the computer doesn't know where to boot from. I've tried holding down opt before booting — that didn't work. I also tried booting from the OS X disc, to no avail.

Nothing is working.

It'll have to go in for repairs, but if someone has any ideas on what to try in the mean time so I can pull the rest of that 5% of stuff off it, I'd aprpeciate it. A co-worker had the same thing happen to him about a year ago and they wiped his harddrive when they repaired it.