I am running OS X 10.1.4 on a 300 Mhz beige G3. Today I booted off the OS X install CD and ran Disk Utility/First Aid to verify the hard disk. It checked the disk and reported everything's fine. So, I quit the installer and rebooted. But it rebooted back into the OS X CD, not the hard disk, so, this time around, after choosing restart, I ejected CD right away. But now upon reboot, all I have is a blinking question mark on the screen. It's not booting from hard disk anymore! I booted off the CD again and after quitting the installer, I read the Restart message and it says: "To start up using your current verions of the Mac OS, press the Option key when your computer restarts." So, this time I held down the Option key but it just keeps rebooting while the Option key's held down. Now, what's going on? How can I make my hard disk boot again?

Restart from the CD, set the Startup Disk control panel to use the hard disk, and reboot again. p

there is no such a thing as Startup Disk control panel when you boot from the OS X CD, pickle.

No, but there is if you boot from OS 9... p

I tried that, but OS 9 does not even see the existence of hard disk.

Boot into Open Firmware, reset everything, and try it again. Read other posts here if you're not sure how to do this; I've posted it three times in the last two days and I see no reason to post it again. Also, see if the OS X installer sees a hard disk. p