Mac OS X.. problem.. what is going on?

Question

ok so here's what happened

we have had windows partition on our mac for quite some time now

we have leapord for the Mac OS X part of our computer

this morning when i woke up and restarted to Mac it had a question mark folder and went directly to windows *Gulp*

when i tried right clicking on boot camp it restarted, had question mark folder, and went to windows

i have searched on google to find out what is going on and they think that my hard drive is dead

i don't think that my hard drive is dead.. but it could be

what do i do?

if i reinstall leapord will it fix it?

do i have to get new hard drive?

i have alot of stuff on the mac side of this computer (pictures and stuff that i probably can never get again)

plz plz plz help me

Answer 1

Assuming you've already tried all the obvious things - holding in the reset button and flashing the PRAM - it's time to get out your Leopard disc and try to boot in from that.

   1.  Insert the Mac OS X Install or Restore disc.

   2. Restart the computer, then hold the C key during startup.

   3. From the Apple menu, choose Disk Utility. Do this in the first screen of the Installer. Don't click Continue. If you click Continue in a Mac OS X Installer version earlier than 10.2, you must restart from CD again.

   4. Click the First Aid tab.

   5. Click Repair Disk.

   6. After repairing the disk, try to start from the Mac OS X hard disk.

Forums like http://forums.macosxhints.com are an invaluable source of advice at times like this, but don't get too freaked out. The 'dreaded question mark' is something I've faced more times  than I like to remember :)

Answer 2

If your Windows partition is working then your disk is not dead.

Stick in the Leopard disk and reboot from that (restart while holding down the "c" key) Then OS X will start off of that DVD. Then go into "disk utility" from the menu bar (ignoring the install screens below) and run the disk diagnostics. You can also choose which start up disk you want but you said the OSX start up may be bad. Re-install is the best thing here.

You can easily re-install Leopard and not have to lose a thing! Just remember to choose (under advanced?) ARCHIVE AND INSTALL. If you archive and install, all your files in your home folder will be saved to an "old system" folder.

Good luck!