What does a folder with alternating ? and finder icons mean?

After booting my G5, it now goes to a blue screen containing a solitary folder in the center with alternating "?" and "finder" icons in the center of it. They flash for approximately 22 times, stop on the "finder" icon briefly, then start up again. I was told that this is a sign that my hard drive was 'fried'. Can anyone verify this--or perhaps give me other information on what might be occurring. All I want to do is reformat my hard drive and give the unit to my grandkids for researching, word processing, etc.--as it is only running Tiger 10.4.11.  Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks for the information, Chris. I did run disk one of the system install, buy it would not take me to the hard drive in the G5--only gave me an icon for a remote(online) startup. Any other suggestion as I tried resetting the PRAM and the SMU--both of which did basically anything new?

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