Start up promblems for father-in-law

My Father-in-law has a powerbook G-4. When we start it up I get 3 blinking icons at boot up. First there is a blinking square icon of the "world". Then a blinking icon of a "?" then a blinking Icon of the "2faces". Then all is well and it boots up to normal desktop. I havn't been around macs in the past years. He runs mac osX, but I know he also has one of the OS 9....... on it .
Thanks for any help.
Bob

Your system is having problems with finding a system to boot up. Once your system is and running. Go to system preferences -> startup and click on your boot disk. This should resolve the problem.

On the OS 9 it is control panel -> startup. You would do the same thing.