No startup disk on boot

Okay, this will be a long story and I hope some people would have the patience of reading everything. I just want to tell everything that may have contributed to my problem. My main problem is, when I start my iMac, it does not find any startup disk (not my Mac OS, and not my bootcamp partition).
It all started when I opened my iMac and got an error message, something about a missing/corrupt ntfs.sys file (I default Windows on startup, and I don't know why this appeared, I didn't convert my HD from FAT to NTFS because I don't even know how to do this). So I looked for it on the internet and most of the suggestions said that I should insert my Windows CD and boot from there, and choose Repair. Unfortunately that didn't work, so I booted from Mac instead (holding down the Option key on startup so that I can choose which partition/OS to start from). I successfully booted on Mac. While I was there, I changed the default disk to boot from to Mac (using Startup Disk). And somewhere in the lower left part of the screen, I saw a lock button that when enabled, it will prevent future changes (on what startup disk to start from I guess), so I locked it.
The next day when I started my Mac, it just showed a blinking folder with a question mark. Again, I searched for it on the internet and followed a thousand suggestions on how this might be fixed. These are the things I tried (not in order), and not one of them worked:
1. Safe Boot/Safe Mode - holding down the Shift key
2. Holding down the Option key - before, it showed my 2 available partitions (Mac and Bootcamp/Windows), but now I just get a blank white screen with my mouse pointer
3. Resetting the PRAM - I can tell that the reset worked because previously, I disabled the gong sound during startup, and after I resetted, the gong sound came back
4. fsck - fail. It fsck'd my Mac OS CD (see step 5)
5. Booting from Mac OS installation CD - although I successfully booted from this one, when I ran Disk Utilities, it only showed the CD and not the startup disks. I even tried reinstalling, but when I got to the part that says select which drive to install in, there were no options at all.
Basically I tried everything that I can find on the Internet, to no avail. I'm worried that this could be a hardware problem, although I still have my warranty. It has only been 7 months since I bought it...
Additional infos: I tried removing my USB keyboard and mouse but that didn't change anything, and I didn't add a memory card on it. I never opened my iMac ever.
HELP!

1. This might happen if it wasn't connected well to begin with, but given that you were already having problems with the drive, almost certainly isn't the case here.
2. Useless except as a paperweight. Any data stored on it and not backed up can only be recovered by a professional service.
(59298)

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