start-up problems with OS X 10.3

[Ja Di ksw]

Hi all. My girlfriend's powerbook is acting odd when it startrs up. When you turn it on, the first thing you see is a small folder in the center of the screen. It looks like the old version of a folder, all flat and 2-D. A little question mark pops up in the middle of it, and then it turns into a small face (Apple's normal little logo face). After that it starts up normally. So far this hasn't caused any problems yet, but I'm worried it will. Especially since I convinced her to get an Apple machine b/c of its reliability right before she went to Austria, and had the hard drive crap out on her immediately over there. Thankfully she's back in the states now, so it'll be a lot easier to get it fixed if it needs to be.
Thanks

[yoda13]

Sounds to me like that you need to go to the control panels and select a start-up disk. My old iBook used to do this if I had not selected between booting up in OS9 or OSX. Now if the computer isn't dual-boot, then I don't have any idea what is going on. You can always repair permissions and zap the PRAM, but it sounds like what used to happen to me when I had both OSes on my computer and had not selected a start-up disk. Hope this helps.