Rebooting old mac g5: Can't get past the grey screen.

This problem concerns an old mac g5 that I had replaced three years ago because it hadn't been working properly. I am getting it out because my son needs a computer and I was hoping that the thing would work for a little while.
I can't get past the grey apple screen. I have the installation disc in and restart while pressing the c. I just am not getting any further than that. The fans begin to sound like a jet taking off. I have tried resetting the pram while starting up, but that doesn't seem to be working either. I have heard about a hair dryer trick and don't really know what is supposed to get warmed up by that.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks.

No hair dryer. What you need to do is make sure the PRAM battery is new. It is a coin shaped battery on the logic board. Radio Shack sells them.
Option key booting sometimes works. You have to us a Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.4.6 retail disc, which are black with a white X logo, and do not say Update Dropin or OEM on them. If you have the original iMac G5 disc that's fine, but web browsing with older operating systems is not very friendly. Some of these machines were known to have leaky capacitors, and getting the power supply replaced on them now would be quite hard because of the age.
http://www.ifixit.com/ may be able to help if you suspect that.

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Rebooting old mac g5: Can't get past the grey screen.

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