Powermac g4 boots up but gets stuck on a blue screen with the mouse

[MacGuy]

Hi,
I booted my powermac g4 this morning and it got to the apple screen played the start up chime and got to a blue screen with the mouse on and wont go any further:confused
any help would be much appreciated as i don't know much about macs

 

[Kaveman]

Judging by its age, I'd say the HardDrive is going down.

Boot from the DVD that came with it and you can run Disk Utilities from one of the Menus.
This should report the state of the Drive if its SMART.

Otherwise you can try an install in place.

The G4 is way passed its use by date.

 

[MacGuy]

thanks for your advice would it help if i installed a new hardrive?
also just to say i have a g3 thats runs fine on panther so maybe it is the hard drive because the g3 runs like a breeze!!!
Also i don't have the disks as i brought it of ebay and unfortuntley he sent the disks for an imac,
does anyone have any idea where i might be able to get hold of some

 

[MacGuy]

also just incase you wanted the specs its a power pc g4 350mhz processer
512mb of ram
dvd drive
mac os x tiger 10.4.11
brand new vga card

 

[Kaveman]

The G4 is a bit more wonky at that age.

Pre-Intel Macs are now firmly in the Hobbiest camp, so spend what money and time you like, they have no real value.