Bizarre "World" or Other Icon at Startup Instead of the Apple Logo

Depending on how your Mac has been used, especially if users have multiple operating systems installed or if they've just freshly installed their system software, the computer may boot and display a different symbol than the default apple symbol.

tacubaya write: "Today my brother, who has an identical Macbook to mine, turned the computer on and instead of the regular silver apple at boot a planet earth (big one, like 200x200 and static) picture replaced it and then after a while the system loaded up."

Macs have various boot screens, which indicate either problems with the boot process or that alternate methods of booting are being used. The most common of these is the folder with the blinking question mark which shows a bootable operating system cannot be found. However, besides displaying for problems, small errors or changed system settings can result in these boot screens displaying on normal and healthy system installations. For instance, if users have installed multiple operating systems and do not have a default boot partition set, the system will take time to search for a boot drive, and in the mean time may display the folder with the blinking question mark. Likewise, and as in the case mentioned above, the globe icon is displayed if the computer is looking on the network for a netboot image to boot from. While these alternate boot processes will not harm the computer, and while in most cases result in the computer booting normally anyway, these boot screens can be annoying and can also have the computer taking longer to boot. It is easily fixable by setting the proper boot drive in the system preferences.

Fix: Reselect the startup disk Go to the system preferences and select the "Startup Disk" preference pane. Then ensure the local boot drive containing the operating system is selected. For most users this will be the "Macintosh HD" with the operating system version listed by it. When users have selected the drive, they should restart and the system should properly recognize the drive and not either attempt to search for a boot drive or attempt a network boot.

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