HELP! Need help for G4 tower...

HELP! Gray Startup Screen Freezes When Booting Up

Have a question about my G4 tower. When I start up the computer I get to my gray screen with the Apple icon on it and the little proccess line icon under it and it does nothing else. Last night I had it do that for 15 minutes and then decided to force the machine off (held down the start button). Does anyone know how to get this to stop?

I obviously will have to have this machine serviced, but need to clean off several files and programs before I take it in, how can I do that with this condition? Have I lost all of these files and programs or are they still retrievable?

Any advice would be greatly appriciated...

Try booting from the CD and see if you get anywhere.

You should have an OS X CD that came with the system, put it in, start the system up while holding down C on the keyboard.

mynameis said:

Try booting from the CD and see if you get anywhere.

You should have an OS X CD that came with the system, put it in, start the system up while holding down C on the keyboard.

Click to expand...

I have tried to boot up holding down c and I got the sam result.

jwat said:

I have tried to boot up holding down c and I got the sam result.

Click to expand...

did you have the OS X cd in?

No, but I cannot even get my cd drive to open to put the disc in. I just get the gray startup screen and that is it.

jwat said:

No, but I cannot even get my cd drive to open to put the disc in. I just get the gray startup screen and that is it.

Click to expand...

Look by the CD tray there should be a little hole, put a straightened paperclip in and the tray should pop open.