10.4 TIGER Blue Screen Of Death? Help Please!

I bought a used iMac G5 17". The imac wouldn't boot and had the flashing question mark. I did a new install and erased the disk and it worked perfect. I then shipped this computer to a relative as a gift. When I went to set it up for them. It wouldn't boot up. The gray screen would appear with the little clock thing and then it would go to the blue screen and hang there. The mouse pointer is all that would be on the screen and it was functional. I tried rebooting to no avail. I then tried reloading the software and it would get about 20 minutes from the end of disk1 and without notice it would restart and again end up at the blue screen. I ran the disk utility and did a hardware check. Initially the hardware checked showed a memory error with the 512MB board, so I pulled that out and it passed the test with just the 1024MB board in place. I tried reloading the operating system again, and again it did the restart again and stopped at the blue screen. I'm out of ideas on this. Does anyone have any?

That is a strange one indeed. You did the first thing I would have suggested and ran the hardware test and found the bad RAM. I am wondering 2 things. Are you sure there is no damage to the OSX Install DVD? Also the DVD Drive in the iMac. Another thing to try is before you do the install after the OSX DVD boots into the installer, Run the Disk Utility and totally erase the drive. Just a shot in the dark but worth a try anyway.

Also one other thing, when the OSX install starts it tries to verify the install media. Are you letting it complete that test?

I think the install DVD is ok since it re-installed the operating system when I first got the iMac. When I tried reloading the operating system I chose the erase and install, which I thought would reformat the disk. Should I go back and do the erase with the disk utility? Since all the hardware checked out it seems like it would be a software issue.

At this point I would try that and see although Erase and Install should erase the drive. I am just wondering why it's rebooting like that. That is something I can't ever remember seeing in all the OSX installs I have done here working on Macs. If you do let us know what happens.

I went ahead and erased and initiated another re-install of the operating system. When disk one finished it restarted, but once again hung upon the blue screen. I then restarted it and held the shift key down, which I believe forces the login. It then spit out disk one and asked for disk 2 to finish the install. When it was all finished I restarted and once again it ended up at the blue screen. It will start in safe mode, so I'm thinking it is hanging on the login. I already checked the startup item for the login account, but there are none, so not sure what to do now.