Trouble starting up for various reasons, please help!!

Question

Hello, I have a macbook pro, and am having some really strange trouble with it.
First, it was telling me my password was incorrect, which it absolutely was not. THe only way I can be so sure of this is because I was reformatting my iPod, and in doing so, it asked me to enter my password to grant permission for the reformatting, which I did, and it worked fine. shortly after wiping the iPod, my computer died. I came back to it, and booted it up to the login screen - at this point in time, it was refusing to accept my password as correct. I tried caps lock, no caps, tried to let it die, restart, etc. etc.
Eventually I was led here, where I found a series of posts with the same problem, and one suggested to type in a script through terminal before the computer was fully booted. It was basically a script to access the password keychain, and update it from there. I put in the script, and restarted my computer. However, this time, instead of going to a login screen like it normally does, it went to a language selection screen, similar to the one you see when you first install the OS. So it prompted me "please select what language you would like to use this software." I clicked English, the dialog box went away for a moment, just to pop up again, and this is where i'm at now. Over and over it will continually just revery back to this screen, not allowing me to do anything.
So this is where I need your help. My CD drive doesn't work, or else I would have just booted from my disk. If there's anyway I can avoid formatting my computer, that would obviously be the more desirable route. To make things perhaps more complicated, i'm not entirely sure which exact operating system I am running, which i'm sure doesn't help. Although I believe it's Snow Leopard.
PLEASE HELP!!

Answer 1

you do not want to install the operating system at this point anyway. i hope that this is the 10.3 (panther) install disk you are booted too. very bad if it isn't. go up to the installer menu and select "open disk utility". then see if the macintosh hd is visible there. if so, select it, and then "first aid", and then "repair disk". if it is not visible, reset the pmu http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449 (your model should be listed there for instructions) and try disk repair again. let us know how it is going. [ 8 ) ]