Failed start up-Grey screen ****

Hi nice people.
I own a G4 imac 15 flat panel, running OSX10.2
Currently after turning on my computer I get the following-
The start up tone, then a screen with the grey apple logo, I then get the spinning grey progress wheel and this is how the computer remains, not progressing from this screen!
The hard drive is making an active noise for the first minute and then goes quiet.
Previously to this situation-
My computer kept locking up while I was using the Internet.
Seeing the progress indicator (spinning disc) it remained constant and I was not able to do anything from this point. Tried force quitting nothing.
Switching off the computer with the power button led me to me my current situation.
I have followed all online help advice that seems to be relevant and have tried the following-
*Resetting PRAM
*Safe Boot
*I have also disconnected all additional devices and Ethernet connection.
*ENTERING SINGLE-USER MODE DISPLAYED THE FOLLOWIING-
BSD root : disk0s5,major 14, minor 5
Devfs on/dev
HFS resolvelink: cant find iNode936777647
HFS resolvelink: cant find iNode2695920
Singleuser bootfsk not done
Root device is mounted read-only
If you want to make modifications to files,
run /sbin/fsk -y first and then /sbin/mount-uw/
AFTER RUNNING, FSK /sbin/fsk y
THE FOLLOWING WAS DISPLAYED-
**/dev/rdisk0s5
**Root file system
**Checking HFS Plus volume.
**Checking Extents Overflow File.
**Checking Catalog File.
Invalid sibling link
(4,10241)
Invalid B-tree Header
Invalid map mode
(4,0)
**Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Missing thread record (id=2384466)
Missing thread record (id=2384465)
Missing thread record (id=2384464)
Invalid directory item count
(it should be 0 instead of 3)
I'm by no means a computer wizz or have any real experience of computer errors, so excuse any stupidity.
If anyone would like to take pitty on me and throw some advice my way I'd be etternally grateful. Maybe I'll even buy you a pint if you ever visit edinburgh.
Cheers
Paul.

Hi Paul, and welcome to the Discussions!
I once had B-tree problems and overlapped extent allocations, and DiskWarrior was able to fix them. No guarantee it'll fix the problems reported by fsck, but even if it doesn't and you have to reinstall your OS this time, DW is worth having to help prevent a recurrence.
The advice from Gulliver here and Dr. Smoke here will also help in future. HTH-- if so you can buy Michael Conniff a pint next time you're in London and we'll call it even. ;o)

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