Attempt to reinstall OS 9... help!

[BB2007]

I bought a MacBook a while ago and with it came an OS 9 cd, and having lost the cd for the main computer (a G4 tower) i threw the cd into the drive... i couldn't open the OS 9 install program because it required me to open the classic program to do so (im trying to install that classic program and the reason i need to reinstall this is because my mom accidentaly reinstalled all system software and wiped the hard drive clean, we got some information salvaged, but not much...) so i open up the "Startup Disc" in system preferences, as the pdf on the cd tells me, and i select the OS 9 CD. It restarts and as it does it comes up with a grey background with a folder in the middle flashing between a questionmark and the mac logo - how could i get it back to the operating system that was working fine, it was like 10.something.... how can i get the cd out of the rom and how can i simply restart without the cd? any special key i need to hold down? any assistance would be helpfull!

i've read some other threads and supposedly this flashing folder means the hard drive is useless now... that would really suck! sometimes i think technology hates me... help!

[BB2007]

k, i booted the comp up this morning while holding 'A' (dont know anything about computers so i was going to hold random buttons) and it booted up fine and all but now how do i install Mac OS 9? The G4 is a 10.3.9 and we don't have classic on it anymore (the install cd tries to open classic to install classic)... i've tried the reboot with the cd in the drive and holding 'c' but that didn't work (it didn't do anything - i've tried restart and shutdown...) then i tried going to startup disc and making it the cd and the above happened... any help would be highly appreciated!

[mitch9654]

you could try booting with a paper clip in the programmers hole,
info on this here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120068 ,

and do something like this:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060301112336384 ,

except with using boot-device as cd:,\\:tbxi hd:,\\:tbxi instead.

Like put in setenv cd:,\\:tbxi. If that doesnt work, go back to old settings by holding down appleicon+alt+P+R (or something like that)

mitch