Imac G5 ALS shows grey screen with blinking folder icon on startup

Helping a friend - her imac G5 got the blinking folder icon with question mark and grey screen and then wouldn't start. She had OS 10.4.11. I booted from install disk successfully- Disk Util said No repairs Necessary. Disk Warrior hung (never had that happen before). Performed Safe Boot. Multiple reboots were all successful.
But a few days later, it happened again. Then I did a clean install of 10.5 and all software updates. Restored her user folder from a clone I'd made before starting. All seemed well.
Now, the grey screen with folder question mark still occurs fairly often. If she restarts, she does get booted. (so far anyway)
My question: what do I need to do to resolve the grey screen with blinking folder icon on startup?
Additionally, the computer is slower than before. Does Leopard run slower on these machines than Tiger? (I'd already advised her to get more ram)
Thanks for your help!

The blinking folder means just that, it can't find an OS to boot to. Tray zapping the PRAM and it wouldn't hurt to run Rember and if the RAM checks out, she might want to add some, 512 is really a minimum, and Leopard should really have at least 1GB.

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Message was edited by: Ralph Landry1

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2. Reinstall Snow Leopard
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Reinstall Mountain Lion or Mavericks
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OS X Lion- Reinstall Mac OS X
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On start up i get a grey screen with a folder and question mark- how do i get out of this?

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http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11046
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Ouch....Time machine would mean moving on to 10.5...
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Imac G5 ALS shows grey screen with blinking folder icon on startup

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