Macintosh and recovery HD ghosts

recently i downloaded the most recent updates for snow leopard. after downloading i noticed prgrams acting unresponsive(itunes, adobe flash player) so i restarted and it seemed to start working again but much slower. i restarted again only this time instead of starting up to my desktop, my mac displayed a unlabled folder with a "?" At the grey startup screen., i tried putting in my snowleopard installation disk and no defauly machine HD shows up only an unaccessible network dmg and the update disk. How do i revive my baby? (*No time machine backup)

P.s. i have tried to contact apple support, unfortunatley i can not afford an apple support membership for a one time fix.

System: Old macbook dual intell processor(or whatever they call it) and upgraded to 2gb ram.

Currently i am attempting to reinstall snowleopard on an external drive and starting up threw that. anyones help and time are greatly appriciated