My eMac screen goes grey, with a box appearing instructing me to restart my

My eMac screen goes grey, with a box appearing instructing me to restart my computer. It appears every time we use the machine, sometimes straight after login. Help!

tb8,
Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
Refer to What's a "kernel panic"?. You can examine the /Library/Logs/
panic.log file to get a better idea as to the cause of the kernel panic (if necessary, post the last dozen lines or so for others to offer comments). You may need to do a safe boot (see below) after disconnecting all but the Apple keyboard and mouse to get at the log. If you have access to another Firewire-equipped Mac, you can use FireWire target disk mode to get at the panic log.
A general troubleshooting checklist and references are in Gulliver - kmosx3: MacOS X 10.3: Basic trouble-shooting. As Sherry earlier noted, disconnect all peripherals other than the original Apple keyboard and mouse to isolate the hardware. You can check if third-party add-on software is affecting things by Starting Up in Safe Mode; if that resolves the issue, you'll need to examine what's in /Library/PreferencePanes/ as well as what's listed under Login Items for your account.
If you can't startup in safe mode, you can boot from the OS X Install disk and run Disk Utility> Repair Disk from the Installer menu. If you don't have the Install disk handy, you can start the computer in single-user mode and use the Unix file system check utility fsck. Both procedures are described in Using Disk Utility and fsck.
You can further troubleshoot software issues (once you can get onto the computer) by creating a new troubleshooting administrative account and seeing if the problem disappears, which would indicate a problem with your account preferences. You can use Preferential Treatment to check your account's preferences. If kernel panics recurr when using a particular program, start with the preferences for that program (move the .plist files from /Library/Preferences and/or ~/Users/[username]/Library/Preferences to a holding folder on the desktop and restart or log out/back in, depending on whether the preferences in question are system or user level). Since you're seeing kernel panics shortly after login and not before, a user preference or login item is a likely suspect.
You can use MemTest to check your computer RAM; it's a more exhaustive test than the one built into Apple Hardware Test.
You'll also want to reference the <following User Tips Library links:
F.J. - kmosx: Kernel Panics ? Don't panic too !
<a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://">http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=121923
a brody - kmosx2: I restart my computer in 4 languages!
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=607410#607410

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