Dead HD? Can't boot from other CDs, either. Help!

I'm looking at a white Macbook for a friend who may be sunk, but I want to check in with you lovely and talented folks to see if perhaps I've missed something.
The Macbook was shut down during a software update (presumably a power-button reset). Any attempt to boot normally after that results in the appearance of an icon of a folder with a question mark on it. I took that to mean that no valid System folder was found. I eventually got it to boot from the system install disc, but Disk Utility only showed the CD drive. No sign of a hard drive at all. I then attempted to boot from both Disk Warrior and Tech Tool discs, but they just spin in the drive for a while and are eventually rejected.
Based on other posts here, I've tried booting from those discs holding down the C key, the Option key or the Command key on various attempts. None of those variations force the machine to recognize or boot from those other two discs. Are there any other cool trick that would help?
My suspicion is that the hard drive is just dead. I'd love to be wrong about that, because I'm pretty sure this friend of mine doesn't have backups.
Thanks in advance for any help!

If *Disk Utility* does not show the hard drive at all, chances are that the drive is dead. There are other possibilities, however. One is a logic board problem preventing reading of the drive, another is an issue with the cable between the drive and the logic board.
The best possibility to recover the data on the drive is to remove it from the MacBook and put it in an enclosure designed for that type of drive, then see if another Mac can read the drive.
If this does not work, your friend will have to decide how much the data on that drive is worth to him. Data recovery companies such as [DriveSavers|www.drivesavers.com] are very good at getting the data back off of even badly damaged drives, but they are not cheap.
Best of luck.

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Holding down "C" at Start Up isn't working.
Most of the time I can't get Preferences > Start-Up to even "see" my Disc 1.
When I can get it to show up in Start-Up, and Select it, and Lock it ... it Still Won't Start Up from the Install Disc 1 ... and in fact usually ejects the disc.
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http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303081
Only if your MacBook Pro has Tiger installed, should you use Tiger for the directory or permissions*:
http://www.macmaps.com/directoryfaq.html
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1. pre-October 1st, 2007 MacBook Pros can boot off:
- - the discs that shipped with them
- - retail 10.5 discs which look like * that do not say Upgrade, DropIn, or OEM.
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4. November 15, 2007 through June 29, 2008 can boot off the discs that came with them, and the retail 10.5.4, and 10.5.6 discs that do not say Upgrade, DropIn, or OEM, and have a label like the image above.
5. June 30, 2008 through December 14, 2008 can boot off the discs that came with them, and the retail 10.5.6 discs that do not say Upgrade, DropIn, or OEM, and have a label like the image above.
6. December 15, 2008 and later MacBook Pros can only boot off the discs that came with them.
Presumably when Snow Leopard comes out in September, all of the above will be able to use Snow Leopard because of the specs on http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.
Message was edited by: a brody

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