White Screen with Question Mark Flashing

Hi
All the sudden I have the white screen with the flashing question mark.  I have a macbook pro 2010.  I unscrewed the bottom of my Mac and wiggled a couple of wires around and it actually booted up and ran for a while.  Then it started to freeze on me.  I put in the Mac disk, and I went to the disk Utitlity and it says disk 2 Mac OS X Base System.  So it looks like it is reading the Hard Drive, but I don't know because I do not know that much about computers.  The thing is it will not let me erase or repair that drive.  Does anybody have any idea on what this is?  I used my computer around 1:30 in the afternoon and then came home to do homework around 5 and in a matter of 4 hours my computer does not work.  I am guessing that it is probably something serious and I will not be buying mac again.
Any Help??
Thanks,
Matt   

Hi
All the sudden I have the white screen with the flashing question mark.  I have a macbook pro 2010.  I unscrewed the bottom of my Mac and wiggled a couple of wires around and it actually booted up and ran for a while.  Then it started to freeze on me.  I put in the Mac disk, and I went to the disk Utitlity and it says disk 2 Mac OS X Base System.  So it looks like it is reading the Hard Drive, but I don't know because I do not know that much about computers.  The thing is it will not let me erase or repair that drive.  Does anybody have any idea on what this is?  I used my computer around 1:30 in the afternoon and then came home to do homework around 5 and in a matter of 4 hours my computer does not work.  I am guessing that it is probably something serious and I will not be buying mac again.
Any Help??
Thanks,
Matt   

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