flashing question mark?

hey, a friends macbook has a flashing folder with a question mark which i am having a look at for him. i put in the leopard disk that came with it to reinstall the os and when i go to "select a destination" it is blank, i am assuming this means the hard drive is damaged, i have a mac myself so i know a little bit about them i went into disk utility and all i can see is the dvd drive and the leopard cd, i cant see any HD as i was going to try and repair the disk. also i went into terminal and instead of the name of the HD coming up just bash 3.2# comes up. any advice would be appreciated cos as far as i can see the hard drive is broke.

thanks

 

yeah i cant try with my own but i havent done it on a mac before only a pc, i will give it a go though, thanks.