[v.stern]

Cleaned my ibook keyboard today with a damp cloth as recommended. when I looked again, the pointer had disappeared from the screen, and the screen had frozen. When I restarted the machine, the screen was patchy grey (and by patchy I mean very patchy) at first, before a 'puddle' of dark blue slowly spread from the middle. frightening. I switched it off and let it rest for a while with the screen up, then started again, and it showed the grey start-up screen with the logo in the middle, but the machine got stuck on that window. then I shut the lid and let the comp. rest some more, but when I started it, the same frightening show happened again: screen first patchy grey, then came the inky blue infestation from the middle.
Is the screen gone? And if so, why? And what happened to the rest of the machine? Please help!

[seanc]

Try letting it dry out for a while. As long as your cloth wasn't dripping wet then you shouldn't have done any damage.
What type of Ibook do you have?

[v.stern]

Thanks, seanc. It's a G4, about 18 months old. The screen does seem to have settled, I now get the start-up window , followed by a completely empty blue screen. Does that mean I have to re-boot it?

[seanc]

Let it dry out some more. Something doesn't sound right.
I see no reason why it should stop booting up just because you cleaned it.
Was it off when you were cleaning it?

Is it possible to boot from the OS X cd? When it's booted up, look on the top menu bar in the installer menu (or in the rest) until you find disk utility. Try repairing disk permissons and also check the SMART status. If the smart status is verified then your hard drive should be fine, if it is failing then you have a big problem.

Try removing any extra ram you have installed and then see if it boots up ok from the hard drive.