Really Weird Problem (Folder ? icon on bootup)

So I upgraded to Leopard. I've been working on getting things set up like I like it. Eventually I decided to transfer some files I had on a DVD to my external disk. This was after I had started Time Machine, which had been doing its thing for a while. I tried to put some stuff on it, but the problem was that I wasn't allowed access to the disk. So I decided to change the permissions for the external disk. Well, during this process, I got tired of waiting because not only was it changing it for every individual file that had been backed up at least twice, it decided that it was a good time to back up some more during this. Eventually I turned off Time Machine and rebooted. I did this through software only. I didn't power off or anything. It killed the process or whatever it was that was changing permissions on my external disk.

So when I boot up, I find myself in Vista. How terrible right? Well, I remembered that I had previously set it to boot up to vista before I installed Leopard. So i reboot again. Now I can't use my keyboard because the new keyboard isn't supported before you get to OSX (STUPID! How can I zap PRAM if I need to?) Anyway, I hold down the menu button on my Apple Remote. This is the same as holding down Alt/Option. I only get the option to go to Vista!

I've rebooted and stuck in the disk and ran disk utility. I tried to repair permissions and that found a few areas. I did the repair disk, which found no problems. So I then went to "Choose Startup Disk" which still couldn't find it. I suppose I could have rebooted and checked again, but I didn't.

Now I decided to simply get a Time Machine backup of my disk and see if that won't work. Any idea of what I could do? I'm quite worried here. The disk is visible in Disk Utility btw.

So I did the backup, and I got an instant kernel panic on startup this time. I figure I need to do a complete erase and install this time... Will see how this goes.

I think time machince wants to own the hard drive (or a partition on the hard drive) meaning only time machine could use it