Flashing file icon w/ question mark at start up

My MacBook had been working fine on Tiger since I bought it last august, and a few months ago I installed Leopard, which also worked great except for safari freezing up every once in a while. But today when I tried to start it up and the blue screen appeared, it stayed like that for about ten seconds, and then a flashing file icon with a question mark appeared. I have no idea what it means, I can't make it startup. I've turned it on and off a few times, hoping for the best, but nothing. This computer is not even a year old, any help?
Thanks in advance.

Welcome to the Apple boards:
Your first hint that something was wrong was when Safari started freezing.
You may have a bad HD or at least one that is going bad.
Boot into the Leopard DVD and in the menu select Utilities and disk utility and repair HD and permissions.
See if that helps.
You may need more powerful tools such as DiskWarrior to repair the drive if it's flaky.
If the computer is less than a year old, you may be able to get it fixed at a local Apple store.

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    Reset the SMC and PRAM
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  • Flashing folder icons with question mark

    After reading through the forums I've found a few discussions and users that have similar problems as me but haven't seen anything that deals directly with my issues.
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