Powerbook won't get past strange icon upon start-up

Hi,
I have a Powerbook G4 that will not go past this strange icon when I try to start it up. I get the traditional Mac start-up sound, then it takes a long time to do anything, then I get a small icon that is in the shape of a folder. It has the Mac face (it is still "happy") and it will pop a question mark up over the folder.
Last night, it was making a strange noise, so I ran the Disk Utility and it said the hard drive appeared to be OK. This morning, it will not go past the icon. Is it saveable? It is pretty old (6 years).

Your hard drive is dieing or possibly dead! Unplug all peripherals, let the machine cool down and persist in starting up. It 'may' boot so you can back up your data. Try booting from the OS disc and run the Utilities to see if it can repair the issue. There are a few third party apps that may help in recovering data from the disc, but there are no guarantees they will work and, of course, they are not free. Sorry, no joy or easy fix for this one.

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Powerbook won't get past OSX gray apple screen

powerbook pismo running OSX for years...much joy and happiness,
up to this point.
Upon starting up my powerbook, I get the good chime and then the gray screen with the apple but no spinning wheel at the bottom, it will go no further.
It just sits there with the gray screen and the apple. I've tried the following:
Safe mode
Reset pram
target mode from another mac shows the pismo hard disk. I can run disk utility on it and the drive is ok.
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Reinstalled the OS from the other mac using target mode and it installed ok. Still no further than the gray apple screen.
It will not start from DVD or from a firewire drive with the OS installed on it
It does see the system folder when I tell it to let me choose a system at startup. I choose it and we are back at the gray screen.
Is this a pram or firmware issue maybe a internal battery
I have other macs, and I can move on, but still would like to solve this puzzle.
Thank you very much.

zydeco,
I am not sure if I can help, but here are a few suggestions...
1. If you have the original software, you may still have the Apple Hardware Test CD. Disconnect all peripherals including a USB mouse, then see if you can boot to the CD.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=112433
2. If you have the internal original AirPort card, remove this card and try starting. A bad card can prevent startup.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50028
If neither of the two suggestions help, please post back.

Won't get past grey screen while starting up....please help

ya my g4 powerbook will get to the grey screen with the spinning gear but won't go no further. If this is a simple fix please let me know.

I had exactly the same problem after updating my pb G4 to 10.4.7 (combo). It crashed and would not restart up past the grey screen. I tried everything for hours...from safe mode, single-user mode, start off cd, target firewire, to reset PMU, PRAM and NVRAM. Nothing worked. The HD wasn't even appearing !
Thinking the HD was dead, I just almost went to buy a new one (or even a new MacBook .
Fortunately some time ago I bought a version of DiskWarrior and started from the CD. After running for 9 hours and freezing several times, it found and repaired hundreds of errors. But still it wouldn't start. At least the HD appeared now in target mode so I backuped my files, started from the OSX CD, deleted my HD and reinstalled OSX, updated 10.4.6 and my Powerbook runs like new... I'll wait a bit before updating to 10.4.7 again !
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Powerbook won't get past strange icon upon start-up

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