Flashing Folder with "?" at Startup

Hi,
I have a 4 year-old MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard that my sister uses for school. According to her, it was working fine until yesterday morning, when it suddenly had a flashing folder with a question mark on a grey screen upon startup.
I have noticed that this is a pretty common problem amognst other mac users, but there were not any useful answers online. I tried following the instructions from this article (http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1440) but I couldn't even manage to get the startup manager to come up. I have tried several times by pressing the option button immediately after the power button (as I would with my other macs) with no success.
Furthermore, I cannot insert my Snow Leopord installation dvd because there is already a disk inside. Pressing the eject button makes the usual sound before a disk is ejected, but it doesn't actually come out (the folder icon stops blinking temporarily while I press the eject button). Leaving the computer on the grey screen causes the computer to overheat quite a bit, so I leave it turned off, but my sister still needs it for her school project. Because this isn't the main computer, most of our important files are in our other computers so we didn't bother backing it up but I would still like to keep the files on this computer if possible.
Thanks

I had some problems with this computer about a year ago where it wouldn't startup and had a circle slash on a grey screen instead of the flashing icon I have right now. We ended up taking it to an apple store where they just returned it to factory settings because they couldn't find the problem (all the information was lost). It is not however, making the "failing disk noises" as mentioned in a different thread (https://discussions.apple.com/message/18660667#18660667). I have also tried to eject the dvd by pressing the trackpad while it rebooted, but it only made the ejecting noise again with no disk actually ejecting.
Thanks again for all the help,
Reina

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