Help! Mac Mini Start up issues

Help! I've had my Mac Mini since about November 2005. I've never had an issue with it, until now. I realize that there are other topics with this same issue, and I've looked through them, but I'm not sure if my problem is the same.
All of a sudden, I can't seem to get it to start up correctly. After hitting the power button, the screen will display a folder with an alternating finder icon and question mark. I checked the manual that came with the Mini itself, and followed the suggestion of holding down the option key at start up. When I do that, the screen only shows a back button and a forward, no hard disk icon to select, so I get stuck at that screen.
I was able to start up the computer by following the second suggestion in the manual of holding down the Command, Option, P and R keys until it makes the start up noise twice. After that, I replaced the keyboard/mouse from wireless to USB and the computer started up just fine for a day or two, and now it's back to requiring me to hold the Command, Option, P and R keys when starting up. I also tried to avert the problem by selecting the start up disk in the system preferences, and that didn't help either.
I have two questions:
1. Could this be due to a keyboard issue? The one I was using was a wireless Microsoft one (only thing I could find locally) and after reverting to the old keyboard off of my old iMac, the problem seemed to be solved, but has since returned (the keyboard off of the old iMac isn't reliable either).
2. Is there anyway to fix this without losing everything on my hard drive?
(note: this is running with a G4 processor, not the intel based one).
Thank you
Message was edited by: aroussell

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
The alternating finder and question mark during attempted startup is an indicator that the system can't find the MacOS install on the hard drive, or that the hard drive is failing. The fact that when you started up with the Option key down you did not see the internal drive as a startup option also points to that issue.
1. Could this be due to a keyboard issue? The one I was using was a wireless Microsoft one (only thing I could find locally) and after reverting to the old keyboard off of my old iMac, the problem seemed to be solved, but has since returned (the keyboard off of the old iMac isn't reliable either).
No, this isn't a keyboard issue. Keyboards that are faulty or not entirely compatible will simply prevent you from changing the way the system boots, or from properly using the system once it's running. Swapping to the old keyboard is likely only associated with this problem because you also reset the parameter RAM at the same time.
2. Is there anyway to fix this without losing everything on my hard drive?
The problem is that if the hard drive is failing, your data may well be already corrupt, but a good first place to start is to find your original install disk - the one that came with the system - and insert that. Then reboot the system, and hold the C key down to try and get it to boot to the install disk. If that doesn't work, try holding the Option key down again to get to that same boot loader screen you had before, (with the install disk still inserted). That should give you the option to select the install disk and get the system started up from that.
If the boot loader screen still shows no available drive even with the correct install disk in the drive, then chances are that the hard drive has failed, though it may be the optical drive/hard drive stack has come disconnected.
If you can boot to the install disk, open Disk Utility from the Utilities menu and see if the internal drive is shown. If it is, select it and then click 'Repair Disk'. That will try and identify any errors and if any are found, will attempt to repair them. If you get errors that it can't fix (typically it will report 'error on exit') then the drive has probably become corrupted and you'll either need a good utility such as Alsoft's Disk Warrior to try and fix it, or perform an Erase and Install to reformat the drive and install MacOS from scratch. This latter option will wipe your data of course, so should not be done unless you don't mind loosing your data, or have tried everything else and have no alternative!

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