iMac G5 Boot Problems

Hey!
Over the last few months I've watched my Mac.. Lose its stability. It's starting to become extremly laggy, the sound is jumpy, and overall it seems as though my favourite machine in the world is falling apart..
Starting last week i'm getting a flashing folder (?) icon when I boot it up. I've read the sticky here and got as much help as I could find but nothing seems to be working.
Usually after a few tries it will boot normally but last night it did not wont to boot. When i tried to dual boot into Windows Seven, it couldn't find either of the partitions.

In the last year I've sent back two brand new iPods, and a laptop battery, and they were VERY bad experiences (One iPod took 3 Months), so before I do anything drastic I wanted to try a complete reinstall. I just had a few questions about how that might work..

1) Will iLife be a part of the reinstal or will it be as if I've installed the stand-alone OS?
2) What about my iTunes Library? I have a backup of everything on my Time Machine drive but what about my account.. If it doesn't boot I may not have a chance to deactivate it.
3) I use Flash and Photoshop, will those be as simple as restoring the profram folders of time machine?
4) I'm a very big player of World of Warcraft.. After simply copying a file over will I be missing anything like windows dll's.. Will I run into those sorts of problems on a Mac?

I've only just swapped to Mac after bei8ng a long time windows user and UNIX as a whole is still a learning experience to me.. If you can help me i any way it would be much appreciated

Thanks!

Why not start with doing a bit of a clean up on current OS to see if that helps. What about Network, has that changed and are settings all kosher.
Isn't Windows seven on a G5 pushing it a bit?
What OS are you on and have you checked out Onyx?

Hey Collin,
I have never heard of Onyx, I'll check it out.
My network settings have not changed recently. They've been the same since I got my Mac back in December.
I am currently running OS X 10.5.6 (I think). Now you have got me thinking that maybe it's something to do with the drive being partitioned. I doubt it would be the OS (Seven) and I have had it without problems for quite a while.

Update: The issue still has not fixed itself. I just tried booting up from the install disc. Disk Utility does not see my drive.. I called Apple and told them about the problem. I was basically ignored! Even though I have apple care and a 3 year warranty, Apple told me I had to get it fixed at a 3rd party retailer at my own cost!

Is this a common problem and is apple supposed to help me with this? Because $350 for Apple Care seems quite pointless at the moment -_-

So this is an iMac G5 Power PC and not a newer Intel iMac? I would almost be willing to bet the Hard Drive is dying. The fact Disk Utility from the OSX DVD would not find it proves it even more to me.

That can be changed. Do you know the specs on on the iMac G5 like CPU speed especially? Does it have an iSight camera or not?

Hey! It's actually an Intel Mac, I got it in December. It's got a 2.8gHz processor and yes, it does have and iSight camera.

If you need any other info just post it.
(I have noticed that my Mac has been getting extremely hot recently so I got an smc Fan Control utility and sped them up a little. My mac is much cooler now and I haven't had the problem since I did this.
Overheating would make a lot of sense actually..

This sounds very much like classic "dying hard drive" symptoms. It's actually caused by bad areas on the hard drive (known as bad sectors), expanding as the hard drive continues to die.

At first, you don't notice it because the bad sectors may be in empty areas of the drive, or in files you rarely use. Then they creep into files that the computer uses often (such as operating system files). The hard drive is designed to automatically reallocate those bad sectors to good areas (if it can read the sectors at all). This is the slow down you experience while the drive performs the procedure. Sometimes your Mac will sit with the spinning beach ball while it does this.

Finally, the bad areas become so expansive that the Mac will not boot. Eventually, the hard drive is no longer recognized at all.

The fix is a new hard drive, installing a fresh operating system, and restoring your data from a recent backup.

Jeff