New hard drive won't load osx disc! Help!

I have a powermac g4 and I loved it to death until the hard drive crashed. I bought a replacement w/ more gb to upgrade since I had to replace it anyhow. The hard drive was blank and I tried putting in the osx disc but it does not load. It goes to the same screen my bad hard drive did, the blue screen with a flashing question mark folder icon. I took a smaller hard drive out of my moms g4 and it worked perfectly in the machine I'm trying to fix..... So I know it's def only a bad hard drive..... My question is how do I format the new hard drive if the disc won't run (even tried holding c on start up w/ no success). Or is this hd bad perhaps too? Help! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

An alternative to the "c" key startup is to hold the Option key. This gives you an onscreen menu of available boot drives. If the Install DVD still doesn't show up, the cdrom drive or the DVD is bad.

If you need more help, please tell us the exact model Mac and what OS X Install DVD you are trying to use.

You should read this, too:
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os...49-what-os-disk-do-i-need-brief-overview.html

I have a powermac g4 quicksilver. Before the hd crashed, the guy who owned it previously installed snow leopard on it.... So I have that DVD.... But I also have an older one panther. The DVD worked when I put my moms hd in... So I don't think the cd drive is bad. It's just very confusing

Well, that is confusing to me, because Snow Leopard won't work on a PowerPC/powermac computer. You must read the link I gave you above. Please?

Oh sorry it was just leopard, my moms runs the snow leopard. My mistake! I was just trying to load the panther on it and it won't run

Are the discs black coloured full retail install and not silver grey model specific discs, or discs copied from something else?

For whatever reason the panther cd decided to work and the hd is now formatting..... Slowly! Once this is done do I just run the install cd normally and follow the instructions?

Yes go back to Installer and commence.Panther is a pretty old operating system. Tiger and maybe e Leopard will install depending on the processor speed.

It ran Leopard prior to it dying.... I just never had the install disc because someone gave me the computer.... I was just trying to get the hd formatted.. but I am searching for a Leopard install disc online to put on there because I just realized I only had the first cd of the Panther anyhow!!! Thanks for your help everyone. If I formatted it using the panther cd, that won't affect it from installing Leopard once I find it right?

Just format it again Mac OS Extended (Journalled) and go into Partition > Options and check format is A>P>M. Also do not like your comment about Panther being slow to format the drive. Make sure you purchase a black full retail install DVD of Leopard.

Ok so for whatever reason my Powermac hated the new hard drive and wouldn't respond to it... I still kept getting the little flashing question mark when trying to format it. When I put it in my moms same Powermac it ran fine so we formatted the hard drive using her computer. She has the exact same Quicksilver only mine has more than three times the RAM in it. It worked fine and installed Leopard on the hard drive and went to the desktop and everything. When I put it back into my computer, it loaded to the gray apple screen and then did nothing else. I put her 40 gb hard drive into my computer to make sure it was just the hard drive that was bad and it loaded her hd fine to the desktop without any errors. I don't understand why her hard drive will work in my computer, and mine will work in hers... but mine won't work in my own computer!!!! lol they are essentially the same computer so I don't get it!!!