Power mac will not boot up

Hello and Good Afternoon,
My school was throwing out Power Mac's so a few students and myself got one as a project to work with. Was able to create a new admin accnt and once i did that i went to erase the hard drive so i can start all from scratch i didnt want any remnants of the school or its configurations on it. it was running OS X Server 10.6, so after the erasing process was done the system powered down and never turn back on. i thought that was odd so i press the power button it came on and it stays on grey screen/apple logo screen and the fans in the unit started to escalate very loud. so i held down the power button and it powered down and i researched the booting commands such as Command-Option-O-F, C, Option, Command R, Command S, Option-Command-P-R i tried so many and all they do is open the cd/dvd drive so i called apple and purchased a OS X Snow Leopard DVD i put it in the drive when it open with each command and same thing happens as i said above. i would like to master this issue but i cant afford to call apple at $49.99 a call for assistance. I would realy appreciate this help and assistance thank you...
Thank You,
Myke

Hi Myke,
Have you tried holding c key at bootup with the 10.6 Install Disc inserted?
Oh, how did you erase the drive to start with?
BTW, PowerMacs can't run anything higher than 10.5.8, so could this be a Mac Pro?
If you don't know the model, find the Serial# & use it on one of these sites, but don't post the Serial# here...
Using this serial number locator is way better than Chipmunk, and more secure:
https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do
http://www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html
http://www.appleserialnumberinfo.com/Desktop/index.php
How to find the serial number of your Apple hardware product...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1349

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mac will not boot up, white screen with turning gear for hours on end

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Step 1
The first step in dealing with a boot failure is to secure your data. If you want to preserve the contents of the startup drive, and you don't already have at least one current backup, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data that has changed since your last backup, you can skip this step.
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b. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, boot the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
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Reinstall the OS. If your Mac was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you’ll need the Apple ID and password you used to upgrade.
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Message was edited by: Brian Hoisington

Hi, and a Warm Welcome to Apple Discussions and the Power Mac G5 Forum!
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amzeditor wrote:
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Message was edited by: MacLovin54321

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Power mac will not boot up

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