Blue Screen On eMac From Generic USB cable for a digital camera?

Question

I recently got a digital camera from a friend and ordered a $2 usb cable to upload my pics. it uploaded them fine but the next time i started my computer i got a blue screen with only the mouse curser on it. i unplugged the cable and tried to start it again and it worked but then it froze again. now every time i start it ( with all the cables unplugged except for the mouse and key board ) it goes to the blue screen.

Answer 1

If you boot in Safe Mode and open Applications/Utilities/Console, can you view the logs (e.g. system.log, CrashReporter logs, panic.log, etc.) looking for events tagged at the time of one of the blue screen starts? Look for indications that the eMac was trying to load some library or start some service, and never came back from that.
How did you upload the pictures from the camera? Did you use a Mac program iPhoto or Graphic Converter or the like, manually drag the photos in the Finder, or did you use camera software? That you can boot in Safe Mode (which disables third-party drivers) but not normally raises the possibility that camera-specific software installed incompatible drivers onto your hard drive. Not that all camera manufacturer software is suspect by any means (Kodak EasyShare works OK on my eMac, for instance), put it's possible some third-party software written for Intel Macs would install itself on your PPC eMac.
If you did use third-party camera software, you have some options. Check the camera manufacturer's website and see if there's a updated installer for the software, especially one for your OS version, and most especially if there are different PPC and Intel versions. If you find a more recent or more PPC-specific version, download that onto CD-R and install it on the eMac after booting in Safe mode.
Another option: boot in Safe Mode, and look for anything you can be certain was installed by the camera software. Look for manufacturer/model name and/or install date. Look at the root level of your hard drive in the Library and System/Library folders, since the eMac is going to blue screen before you ever get to the login prompt (note: if your eMac is set up to automatically log you you, extend the search to your home directory Users/yourname/Library folder as well). Besides searching by name (command-F) on the hard drive, you can manually inspect folders to spot things that may not occur to you to plug into the search box. Some places to look:
/Library/Application Support
/Library/Extensions
/Library/PreferencePanes
/System/Library/Extensions
/System/Library/Contextual Menu Items
You can move suspect software to a holding folder (don't delete anything yet!) and then see if a normal start will work.