emac cold boot problem

emac G4 320gig 7200rpm hard drive 1gig ram
on a cold boot i get system failure(corrupt stack).
i let it sit and warm up then shutdown and restart it boots ok and keeps working. i am new to computers (4 years) this emac is my first.
any ideas?
beartrap

Welcome to Mac-Forums, beartrap.

Is this eMac running on 10.4.x?

A cold boot runs POST as it starts up. A restart does not, so you could have a bad but still functional ram chip. In other words the ram chip might fail the POST but still function enough to allow the eMac to restart. When you say you shutdown following the system failure, do you mean a cold, dead boot? Or are you forcing a restart?

A cold dead boot. I'm running 10.4.9

I reinstalled my ram. Working great for a week now.
thanks
beartrap