Screen Stuck on Grey Apple Screen

There are several possibilities. The first thing I wold do is boot into single user mode. To do this, hold down CMS-S (the apple key and the S key) when you boot. At the command prompt, type "fsck -fy" (without the quotes)
With any luck, it will fix a few problems and report that the file system was modified. If so, typr "reboot" when it's done. If not, post back.

Jeff

You can try verbose mode - hold down command-v when you boot. It should spew a screenfull of gibberish (to most of us anyway). When it hangs, hopefully you'll see what it says. You may be able to understand it or not, but post back what it says when it stops.
You may also take a look at this site http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/faqs.html
as it covers troibleshooting pretty well.

Jeff

Have you tried using Disk Utility to do a Disk Repair, while booted up on your install disk?
You could have some directory corruption. Let us know what errors Disk Utility reports and if DU was able to repair them.

Cheers! DALE

That looks like a corrupted HD - if fsck didn't find anything, you should try DiskUtility from the install CD (as others have suggested). If that's no help, TechTool or DiskWarrior would be the next step. Of course, they aren't free, nor particularly inexpensive, and they might not help.

If you don't want to purchase more software, you may try an erase and install.

If the erase and install does not help, your HD could be failing.

But do post back with more questions and to let folks know if you're getting anywhere.

Sometimes they just fail; you just can't prevent it. One thing would help with a Powerbook. Treat it gently so you don't screw the drive up. Don't jar or drop it, etc.
That's why I have two backup clones of my main drive, in case the main goes.
You can catch corruption by running Disk Repair, or better yet, DiskWarrior once a month.

 Cheers! DALE

As Dale said, you probably didn't do anything. Sometimes HD's just fail.
There are a few ways to make a backup. If you have an external Firewire HD, you can boot from your install disk, and use DiskUtility to "restore" your internal HD to the external HD. To recover, you would boot from the install disk, and restore the external HD to the internal HD. You can backup without booting from the install disk, and it would probably be fine, bit booting form a different disk thatn the one you're copying from will give you a more reliable backup.

There are apps like SuperDuper, CarbonCopyCloner, Retrospect, and some others that will offer more options (like automation), but you already have DiskUtility, and it works just fine.
Also, if you upgrade to 10.5, it has TimeMachine which automates the backup process.

hth

Jeff

I like the free demo of SuperDuper to make clones. It's free, Tiger ready and is easy to use. If you buy the full version you can do incremental backups.
You should use Disk Utility to do a Disk Repair, as shown in this link, booted up on your install disk, before you make a clone of it.
I then partition my external disk, in Disk Utility, with a partition that is the same size , actually a tad bigger, as my system disk. I then use SuperDuper to clone my system disk over to that partition.
With a clone on an external FireWire drive (USB drives are not bootable on Macs) you can bootup on it to do your repairs or just run your Mac anytime you have trouble with your main drive. Be careful, there are a few external FireWire drives out there that are not bootable on Macs. Check the drive's manual to be sure.

 Cheers! DALE