About four days ago my mac suddenly came down with the infamous grey curtain with the obstrusive message "you need to restart your computer". Well, seeing that just made me wanna puke. I didn't know what to do about this then and still don't. Since I have bought new ram and installed it today be it still is responding the same where it loads the desktop then tries to start up a few default applications I have set then stops going further. I don't have my original disks for os x (they were lost in a fire) so can someone tell me what to do to get my g5 baby back?

boot from a different drive, or Install DVD, and see if it also kernel panics...

Thanks but ....How do I go about that? when I only get as far as the desktop for 30 secs before the curtain drops. I don't havethe original install discs eitherj

When you power on your mac, you should be able to press a key or combination, Apple+C or U or F or just C alone, to let it boot from something different than the main harddisk, so therefore you don't have to boot into the main harddisk to choose a other device to boot from...

BTW
search for you install dvd's! They can be very handy