ibook flashing question mark on boot

i have an ibook g4 1.33ghz with 512mb ram and a western digital 120gb. it was working fine till one day on boot it started flashing a question mark and then the finder face. it will not boot. i tried using the 10.5 install disk and reinstalling but i have the same thing. i tried it again, this time deleting the old partition and making a new one and still the same thing. i took out the hard disk and put it on a ide to usb adapter on my macbook pro and i could read the drive fine. disk utility sees it fine also. i also tried repairing the disk and repairing permissions and the same thing is still happening. i tried using a different stick of memory and that did not help. is it my logic board? does not make sense since it booted setup fine and went through setup fine also. i also reset the power management. any suggestions? when i hold down option on boot i get two arrows. one that is in a circle shape like a recycle one and one that is pointing to the right. also i tried using the setup disk to select the boot drive and that did not help either. what is going on!! ?

If the computer is booting successfully from the OS install DVD...and the hard drive is working ok (via externally as you tested)...then that should eliminate the:

- CD/DVD drive
- hard drive
- and logic board as problems

When you tried to install 10.5...how far did the install get? All the way...or just partially?

Did you try to reformat the hard drive first before installing?

- Nick

yea, it got all the way through the install and then rebooted and went to the same screen. also the first time i tried and archive and install. the second time i went into disk utility and erased the partition and then created a new one (journaled) and then installed onto that partition. when i ran the disk repair it said" disk appears to be ok

forrestf said:

...the second time i went into disk utility and erased the partition and then created a new one (journaled) and then installed onto that partition. when i ran the disk repair it said" disk appears to be ok

Click to expand...

You mention the word "partition". Do you have this disk formatted with multiple partitions...or one single volume?

If multiple partitions...I would keep things simple at this point...and format the disk as a single volume. Install the OS (10.5)...then see if everything is good to go.

I would:

- reformat the drive to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"
- a single volume
- install OS 10.5
- boot from the HD

Hopefully everything is successful,

- Nick

yes, there is only one partition. a single volume.