Ibook Clamshell Shows folder with a question mark when its turn wont start

I have an ibook clamshell which was passed down to me from my cousin it was workin fine for a while and i just put it aside so i could save up and upgrade it to tiger. But just yesterday i turned it on and it did what i guess was a disk check which had one button on the left which was to retry the search and another to continue forward.when the search is done it doesnt show anything and when i click forward the page jus either blink(a really quick flash ()rarely though) or does nothing.I have only tried rebooting the clamshell to resolve the problem. Im not sure of the spec of this computer but i know its a ibook clamshell graphite, 1 usb port,,1 ethernet port i believe thats what the firwire or fireware port is, and one other port that the size of a telephone line. Sorry but i am un aware of the mhz and it does not have an airport card installed in it. So if anyone has any idea what i can do to save my laptop besides purchasin a new one please help me thank you.

...1 ethernet port i believe thats what the firwire or fireware port is...
The Ethernet port is not the FireWire port.
The picture below shows (from left to right)
Internal 56 Kbps modem
10/100 Base-T Ethernet
USB (Universal Serial Bus) 1.1 port
FireWire
Video/Sound output
The ports on a non-FireWire iBook are shown below:

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