Ticking sound and question mark are not good signs. Generally it leads to hard drive problems. Do you have the original installation DVD disk? Insert it in your Mac and try to start from it. When you do that, hold down the C key until the Mac is booted. Once that is done, run Disk Utility to verify disk problems and repair permissions. The report should tell you whether there are any problems with your start-up disk.
On another note, you should really consider creating a different user ID for the forum. Using your email address is a sure invitation for spammers to collect your address and bombard you with spam.