Flashing Question mark on start up?

So when I try to start up my PPC G5, I hear the start up tone, and then it goes straight to a grey screen with a flashing question mark. I followed all the steps on Apple's website to resolve this, I held option and started up, and all that came up were two buttons, one looked like a circle with an arrow at the end of it and the other was a straight arrow, also I couldn't move the mouse past a certain point on the screen, so the mouse was responding, it just couldn't move past maybe an inch on the left side of the screen. I tried restarting with the mouse and keyboard unplugged too, no dice. Then finally I decided to just re-install the leopard operating system. I put the disc in, go through all the steps, and when it asks me where i want to install Mac OS X, there's nothing to select. Where an icon for the hard drive should be it is just blank. I tried clicking the blank space to refresh it and nothing happened. Also, I read online that usually waiting fixes it, I left it on overnight and still nothing has popped up. Also, I've already tried resetting the PRAM, and nothing happened. If anybody can help me fix this it would be greatly appreciated. Either how to install Leopard again or how to start it up without the flashing question mark. Thanks!

"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu at the top of the screen. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.
(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive.)

Similar Messages

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    Problem: Flashing question mark at startup.
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    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50959
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  • Flashing question mark at start-up

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