Start up problem, freezing, grey screen, chime

Hi there,

Im not very techy so please bare with me. Im writing this from my work computer as my Macbook which I purchased second hand, only 3 months ago, has frozen.

Ill try to explain the best i can.

I was using the internet (btwifi openzone, as waiting for sky to connect me) and the signal was poor, i gave up after a while and turned it off the normal way that I do. Turned it back on an hour later and heard the 'chime', the little swirly thing was going round in the middle of the screen (white at this point), all good - and was then met with a grey patterned screen with a big black square in the middle with white writing in 5 different languages, which read 'you need to restart your computer. Hold down the power button until it turns off, then press the power button again.'...I noticed the the swirly thing was at the bottom of the screen, and had frozen. I've now turned it on and off for the past 24 hours....and nothing, the same image comes up.

Any ideas? Many thanks

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Not under warranty as was second hand - it did come with discs though...not exactly sure what they are, but presuming they are the software.
Also, ive never had any problems so far with the mac.

Hi Bailey thank you for your reply.
I did some research and it seems the error message I am getting is a 'kernel panic'. Im reading up on it but its hard for me to make sense of it all.
So you were right I think, when you mentioned the kernel.

Also, and this shows how untechy I am, but I actually have a Macbook Pro! Not a macbook,although my other one is a Macbook (water damaged and unuseable as far as i can tell).

Ive held down the shift key whilst starting up, to get into safemode, which I did successfully - however, when it asked for a password, I requested a 'hint' and it said 'there is no password, press return/Yes key'....which I did...but no luck, it just keeps giving me the hint!!

Any ideas?? I cant get any further with this! thanks