[Kaps]

I am helping a friend out. He has a G4 iMac running OX X 10.3.8. When he starts up, it seems to start up fine but when it reaches "Login Window starting" it just stays there for ever. The last thing that happened before this was that he was using iChat and someone was sending him a picture., apparently he had gotten off line (as reported by his friend) during the transmission. My friend was getting the beach ball and decided to restart the computer. Ever since, he has not been able to start up. Things I've already done: I ran TechTool Pro (there was a lot of damage to the volume, but after a couple of runs, everything was fixed); I ran DiskWarrior after TechTool Pro (which found some problems and fixed them). Also, I have a cube that I hooked the iMac to in Target mode. I tried removing some of the startup items. That didn't help. I imagine that it might be some preference file, but I have no idea where to begin. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[iYeat]

Startup the machine holding down the shift key, This will boot it into "safe boot" and only boot the kernel extensions that shipped with the OS.

after it's booted, open the Disk Utility and repair the disk permissions on the drive -- may not fix the issue but weirder things have happened...

Reboot- -- if it doesn't work.. it's time for an archive & install..

boot off of the panther disc.
On the screen where it allows you to select the hard drive click "options" and make sure that you archive & install while still preserving network and user settings.

On reboot after the install, run software update immediately.