Gray error box to shut down

Question

I'm getting a gray error box that I've never seen before that states "turn off computer immediately by holding in the power button". Has anyone experienced this? I shut my machine down and restarted. The window popped up again. I'm not sure if this is an application error or something else.

Answer 1

chrabeneck,
"Peripherals: printer and iPod dock..."
Have these always been connected?
When you disconnected them as advised, did the KPs stop?
"...I added an airport extreme card..."
Have you checked it to see if it is still seated properly?
"I'd feel better having a solid back up before more testing."
Have you created that yet?
"...repair disk, I did not attempt this as I have ordered a backup hard drive and it's not here yet."
Running Repair Disk is the first step when when troubleshooting Kernel Panics, as it should not jeopardize your data.
But I understand your caution!
"80GB hard drive; 13.96 GB available"
You may be running to close to a safe parameter of available free space.
Insufficient available space, can cause performance issues, system corruption, and possible loss of data.
Depending on Mac system usage habits, it is a general recommendation, to keep 10% to as much as 20%, of the Total capacity, available at all times.
Review the suggestions, in the documents that I have linked to below.
Authored by Dr Smoke:
Problems From Insufficient RAM And Free Hard Disk Space
Freeing Space On Your Mac OS X Startup Disk
Have you ever run any routine Maintenance procedures, as suggested in the articles linked to below?
Mac OS X 10.3/10.4: System Maintenance, authored by Gulliver
Maintaining Mac OS X, authored by Dr Smoke
Is the Mac shutdown overnight, or does it run 24/7?
If you turn the Mac off nightly, the Background Maintenance Tasks, are never run.
These can also be run, using a Third-Party utility, or manually using Terminal, to run the CRON Commands.
I use MacJanitor, when necessary.
INSTRUCTIONS TO RUN CRON MANUAL COMMANDS
Quit all applications/programs.
Navigate to HD > Applications > Utilities.
Double click on Terminal, to open.
At the prompt, type:
sudo periodic daily
Press Return.
Enter your Admin password when prompted, then press Return.
This will execute the daily script that is sheduled to run every night.
When completed, repeat this procedure, but change the command to:
sudo periodic weekly
This one rebuilds a database or two, and usually takes somewhat longer to complete. It is scheduled to run once a week.
Repeat again, with command:
sudo periodic monthly
Or they can all be run in one pass, which is preferable, with this command:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
When the tasks complete, and return to the prompt, you may quit Terminal.
Restart the Mac, and run Repair Permissions.
TO REPAIR PERMISSIONS ON THE STARTUP DISK
1.Open Disk Utility, located in Applications/Utilities, and select the startup disk in the left column.
2.Click First Aid.
3.Click Verify Disk Permissions to test permissions or Repair Disk Permissions to test and repair permissions. (I never "Verify". Just run "Repair".)
Rerun RP, until the only messages reported, are listed here Spurious Permissions Errors Using: 10.3.x, authored by Michael Conniff.
When "Repair Permissions" is complete. Quit "Disk Utility".
ali b