IMac-restarted in OS 9; now only have ? mark/folder blinking.SUGGESTIONS?

Hi. After attempting to restart in OS 9, my old graphite iMac SE DV 400 mhz suddenly froze and when I hit the restart buton, all I have now is the dreaded alternate ? mark/ folder symbol and multiple attempts end up the same.
Any remedies? Is my hard drive cooked? (its not the original 13 gb hard drive , but a 20 gb that was replaced after about 4 years ). PLEASE HELP and thank you.

The startup volume parameter is stored in PRAM, so you might try resetting PRAM before doing anything else.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
Then try starting up normally or with the X key held down.
If it was set to boot from Mac OS 9, the Option key will not work because it will provide the last attempted system for each bootable volume (which would be Mac OS 9). The Shift key will just attempt the +Extensions Off+ boot for Mac OS 9.
As suggested in the linked article, if you have Panther installed, try starting up from your Panther Mac OS X installation disc. When you get the first Installer screen, go up to the menu bar and run Disk Utility from the Panther menu. In Disk Utility, run +Repair Disk+ on the startup drive.

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