eMac troubleshooting

Hey guys, I'm new to the forums, and I'm not quite sure as if this is where to post this problem, but hopefully you can help me anyways. I have an eMac that I brought up to school. Before I brought it, it worked great, no problems at all. Then I packed it up, and brought it to school. When I plug it in here, I go to turn on the machine, and the normal Mac sound plays, and a gray screen comes up and then the system just hangs. Does anyone know what could be causing it to hang all of a sudden? I don't have any recovery cd's or anything yet, but my dad is sending me one just in case I need it to get my computer to boot. Any other suggestions are welcome!

Well, without the CD's there isn't much that you can do at this point. You would need the recovery and install disc to boot from to see if anything could be diagnosed or repaired if need be.

Try unplugging it and trying it in a different outlet maybe? That probably won't change anything, but you never know.

alright, I will try that... I'm just hoping that a reformat isn't needed as there are a lot of important school docs/pictures/music files on the machine. Thanks for the assistance though!