[Nobody]

I have a G5 with OS 10.3.3
About a month ago suddenly when restarting or booting up the computer, an "earth" icon appears and blinks for about 4 minutes after which a folder icon blinks alternating between a face and a question mark. This blinks for about one minute and then the computer spins up and the screen flashes and the apple comes up. Then the system comes up fine. I have done a search for an earth image, and have checked in startup folders and cannot find anything that looks unusual, although I don't know quite what I would be looking for. I'm afraid this is some kind of virus that was downloaded or emailed to me.
This is very frustrating when I need to restart for any reason. I guess it forces me to take a break and think about peace on "earth" . . . .
Any ideas?
thanks!
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[Duke_Thomas]

Based on that description of a globe with a question mark, that sounds like it is trying to netboot ... that is, boot an OS provided by a remote server. Since it can't find a netboot server at launch, after a delay it searches for and finds the local bootable filesystem. Try the following to see if it helps: open the "startup disk" pane of system preferences, make sure "Mac OS X, 10.3.3" on the local machine is selected, and then restart to see if this problem is resolved.

[Nobody]

perfect! thank you so much. You've made me a believer in the mac forums. This is my first one. It was such an obvious fix. Thanks again for responding so quickly.
kim