My powerbook g4 is not starting. it opens the gray screen and just says i need to restart the computer. i tried restarting it and removing the battery a bunch of time and nothing is happening. HELP!!!

I am going to have you take your Mac into Safe Mode to see if we can't remove a possible folder(s) that may be affecting your Mac's start up function.

Try these steps:


-SAFE BOOT MODE-
• Reboot your Mac
• Upon restarting your Mac, press the Shift key.
• Hold the Shift key until you see a White Screen with Gray Apple icon and eventually a spinning gear.
• When you see the Spinning gear, release the Shift key.
• Allow the Powerbook G4 to continue booting up. Also this may take a little while
(NOTE: this may take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes to load to the Safe mode screen depending on the performance of your Mac, but if it exceeds this time, shutdown your Powerbook G4 and try just once more. It may have just frozen up the first time around for you.)

• You are going to enter the Safe Mode (which looks like your main desktop environment - the only difference is certain start up items are disabled.)

• Once within the Desktop in Safe Mode
• From the Finder Menu, click Go> Go to Folder
• Type in this line: /System/Library/StartupItems
• This path, is going to take you to the System Library folder which has all of your Mac OS X Startupitems.
• Remove all of those folders to the Trash.

*Reboot your Mac normally and see if you can access your normal User desktop environment.

At times this procedure does help for gray screen issues so give this a try and let me know if this helps.

Thanks!

-Mactechtrainer