The blinking question mark indicates that the firmware could not find a valid Operating System on your machine.
Your harddrive may have failed. Your filesystem may have bcome corrupted.
You may want to seek professional help here. You need to decide how important you data is to you. Be sure to specify that you want your data back.
In addition to the fix your mac places, there are professional firms the will attempt to recover data from a failed harddrive. Recovery does not come cheap.
diy...
I suspect disk corruptions.
verify & repair your startup drive
To verify & repair you file system on the startup drive, you will need to run disk utility from you installation DVD.
This article will tell you how to get to disk utility. Once in a disk utility, you can go and attempt to recover the disk.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417
To repair your startup drive, you will need to run disk utility from your startup DVD.
Mac OS X 10.4: About the utilities available on the Mac OS X 10.4 Install DVD
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2055
How to run disk utility from your startup DVD.
- Insert your startup DVD into your reader. Power down your machine. Hold down to the c key. Power on your machine. This will bootup your startup DVD.
- This will bring you to a panel asking you for your language. Pick your language.
- You you come to the Install Mac OS panel. Do not install.
- Click on Utilities menu item. This will give you a pulldown list of utilities.
- Click on the disk utility.
- You are now in disk utility. Pick your disk. Click on repair it should be on the lower right of the panel.
- Once the repair completes successfully, you should update your permissions.