DiskWarrior

#1: Do not touch your HD cables, that's suicidal. It's almost certain that would just make things worse. Hulk, you know what you get by tweaking cables ? BOOM! ;) #2: The disk is there, good news. Now, the problem must be about the Finder or messed up ROM resources. Shut the computer completely. Boot it normally. Won't work ? Zap PRAM, as suggested (reboot with alt+p+r)....

I'd go for Diskwarrior 3. ...

Run Norton Utilities 8.0 or DiskWarrior 3. ...

simply freezes after performing a few hundred thousand tests. DiskWarrior is the only one that finishes the job. ...

Use Carbon Copy Cloner and clone your hd to an external hd. I do so routinely to an external Firewire drive (which is also bootable) to run OS 9 utilities - Techtool Pro 3.x and DiskWarrior.

same vein check whether you are short of VM space AND extremely fragmented. There are a few utilities that can both check and fix this. PlusOptimizer which comes DiskWarrior is my choice. ...

y until it stops. If it doesn't. Consider getting Alsoft's DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro. ...

I agree that DiskWarrior can be indispensable in cases such as this. It's available as a downloadable purchase from Alsoft. ...

Best bet is DiskWarrior. You should keep a DiskWarrior CD with bootable system on it to run repairs. ...

My iBook 14" gives me a flashing question mark (within a folder icon) when I try starting up the computer. I've tried running Norton, DiskWarrior, and TechToolPro ... Norton DiskDoctor has an error midway through its examination; DiskWarrior and TTP won't even start up. The bizzare thing is that when I use Norton, for example, its finds the hard disk drive to examine, so...