Folder with question mark at startup

Hello BleepingComputer to get straight to the point when I boot up my MacBook, the folder icon with a question mark in the middle of the folder displays for about a second or two, then it removes itself and the apple icon comes onto the screen and the turn style starts to spin underneath it and everything works normal.

As for my questions, I'd like to know if this is actually a problem or what the deal is. I ran the disk utility and it says my hard drive is ok, went ahead and repaired and verified the disk permissions just for the heck of it, and that also turned out ok. If it's nothing that's fine, could someone verify for me as to what to do for the boot up to run normally, and by normally I mean without the folder/question mark icon showing first on boot up. Even if it means having to format and re-install that's fine, I just want to be sure that whatever is done will fix the problem.

For a little background, OS X Leopard was installed, and when I installed Snow Leopard I think I made a mistake by formatting and installing Snow Leopard when I should have done an upgrade, and this is possibly why the folder/question mark icon displays at boot up? Could someone please verify this?

Lastly, every once in a while when I click on the battery icon it displays the service battery tab. It's not always there, gone for sometimes weeks. Should I test it, or just leave it be? FYI this is one of the first MacBooks 1,1 (in system profile) 1.83 Intel Core 2 Duo

Go to Apple menu > System Preferences > System > Startup Disk, choose the Mac OS X icon and hit Restart. It may or may not fix the question mark issue you're seeing.

I didn't read through these.
Service Battery: Snow Leopard encourages battery replacement
10.6 falsely reports 'service battery?' ... I think not

Just for a little bit more info on the question mark it really isn't a problem a Long as OS x starts. This was a common issue on the older PowerPC hardware a result of slow os detecting speed on the part of the boot rom on those. But I havent seen this issue really on intel machines, I always fixed with a pram reset and flush but I will wait to see if buddys way helps any. Any way just a little more info on the issue.

Buddyme2 that did work, thank you. It was annoying seeing that folder/question mark icon every boot. Thanks for the additional info computerxpds, if the icon returns I'll do a pram reset and flush. The first link buddyme2 has instructions from apple which for whatever reason I could not find, and they are somewhat time consuming. When I have completed the battery test I will update otherwise this situation has been successfully solved

Thanks again computerxpds and buddyme2

I had the same issue with the folder with the question mark on it. I tried the startup disk from the system pref. It seemed to fix the issue.