Major Problems w/ ibookG4 software restore

Question

i have an ibook G4 that i believe i bought in May of 2004, and i believe it is running Jaguar. I am not sure if it is the (10.3.1)
I came home from school and the creen was a light blue. I reset the computer and it would not boot up. The apple icon was showing in the middle of the screen and the disk looking object below it was spinning, and nothing more would happen. i unplugged and took out the battery and let is sit for a couple of hours. then i tried to boot it up and i DID work, after about 3 mins though the screen turned black. i got some intell from this site and decided that i should try to reinstall my software. I put in "OS X Install Disk 1." i went thought a couple continues and the agreement, then came to a screen that said, "select destination." the only available icon to select from the window was the Mac HD icon. i selected it and clicked continue, after a moment it said something like 'You are trying to install an older version of Mac OS X', and it quit trying to install. i decided i would give up for then. I went to quit Installer and the box poped up that said cancel, (change)startup disk, quit. I believe it said change startup disks, which at the time i thought that ment change the disks in the disk drive, i wasn't thinking clearly. when the window poped up to selsct a startup disk, the Mac HD and a "?" over it, or at lease i does now, i clicked the Insall disk, which was the only option and selected OK, or quit, or something.
Now i believe that i was suppose to change something i the Options when i came to that window that said "select destination." I read that i have to select either archivwe and restor or erase and restore ( or something like that). The only problem is that now the Mac HD icon doesn't appear in the icon window when you are suppose to select your destination for the insallation. i was messing around in the disk utility from the Istallation window and noticed that my Mac HD is NOT mounted, i clicked the mount button, however it appeared to have no affect.
Any information that you could give me would be awesome.
Thanks Very Much
also when i fist power on my ibook, now, there is a picture of a small globe, then after a few moments it shows a folder shat switches to the Mac face thing, and a "?" flashed over it. then it goes to the Aplle and then the the software "Install Mac OS X" widnow.

Answer 1

Hi admaibkg4,
Welcome to the Discussions.
It seems there's a problem with your HD. It's possibly dead.
The globe icon at startup is your iBook searching for a network drive to start from, the flashing ? means no valid system was found and finally it starts from the install disc. Launch Disk Utility again from the Installer menu and try to select the drive again. If your drive won't appear or mount it's probably dead and you'll have to have a new one installed.
It's possible at times to extract files from a "dead" drive if you have an external enclosure (http://www.macsales.com sells a good one). Recently I was able to get a failing drive (my mother-in-law's) revived long enough to retreive some valuable files by placing it in the freezer for an hour and then placing it in the enclosure. If cold doesn't work a 175˚F oven may. There's nothing to lose.
A benefit to having an external drive is ease of performing backups. Always have a backup of important data. All drives will fail at some point in time.
John