Mac G4 Won't Boot

My trusty G4 1.0Ghz Desktop will not go past the grey Apple screen and eventually just gives the Ø sign.

Please help. Need to access some files on a hard drive on this machine like yesterday.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Have tried to boot from CD but no progress. From the command terminal, I found it was "waiting for root device."

Please help! Need to access these graphics files for a charity event coming up soon!

Have you tried installing from the original cds that came with the computer? Worked for me

Sounds like you G4 LT may have died on you. Without having my hands on it. It is hard to tell. I would find a local tech to pull the hard drive and access the drive from another computer to pull the files off of it. Or if you have another Mac handy, Start up you G4 by holding down the T key. This puts the computer in "target Disk mode". Then you can connect it via Firewire to another Mac. If you have successfully booted into TDM, you will see a Firewire symbol on your screen.