Dead iMac?

Try a safe boot. Switch off, then when you switch on again hold down the shift key. It'll take a while to get going. If it starts OK, use disk Utility to check the hard drive. Then try a normal startup.

what version of OS are you using?

Safe boot fails too.

latest OSX 10.8 ?

MAC dealers for an assessment and service perhaps?

ATB from George

So I guess you don't have a startup disk? Maybe your hard disk's failed but you need to boot up from a separate source To confirm. Have you got one of your original startup disks?

As long as you've a backup it's actually pretty straightforward to replace the HD, lots of tutorials on iTube. It'll be a damn sight cheaper and quicker, plus you can pop in a larger one.

if you get a single chime on startup it may have just lost its start drive pointer, can happen if pram/nvram battery is losing charge, which can happen after a prolonged powerdown.  Try http://support.apple.com/kb/PH6656 to repoint. If it works might be worth getting the battery replaced which requires a service support job on the recent imacs. you may have lost some system settings as a result if the battery is flat.

Why is it I can find all other things applicable to my Mac EXCEPT the startup discs??????

I've got the mac to bring up the start up options, by holding the option key on switch on.

I now have an OSX utilities page. I have used the HD disk utility andIt says file structure is OK as are permissions.

Should I do a backup from Time Machine? What are the ramifications? 

Hi Howard,

Just remembered, in Mountain Lion you can start up from the internet - here's the instructions - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

As an aside, it's worth creating a Mountain Lion startup USB stick. Google for instructions on the internet.

This is me typing on iMac.

I did a OSX backup/reload? I wish these devices gave a failure report or something.

sematic

Case seems to be getting very hot, I know that that is not unusual but it seems hotter, maybe psychosomatic?

Is there a fan? If yes any way of seeing if it's working?

Thanks to all for their input.

Run Disk Utility to check the HD.

Disk Utility says it's OK.

Hi Howard,

If you can get it to play ball again, I use a free widget called iStat Pro on my 24" iMac which displays various system temperatures and fan speeds.

http://www.apple.com/downloads...status/istatpro.html

Good luck with it.

John.

I get an error when trying to download istat.

Oooh , mac really is running unix. As a seasoned unix person, you have plenty of options.

Bear in mind ive never even pointed or clicked on an apple product, those that state do fsck are to be followed I would say. Or perhaps if its up and running I would backup as much of it as I can then go down the route of fixing up. Fsck is good but may not fix everything, so having the ability to boot offa another known good device can be very useful. For eg a dvd/cd/usb or as put forward  Apples own servers. This means the OS bears no connection to your hard drive, its running in memory and you can mount your HD or apply the toolset to it.

Other OSs may also let you do this eg knoppix ...there are plenty of live boot sites that let you do this (burn a bootable image) for x86  but of course you'll need to check compatibility with your hardware, I suspect the set of liveboot images will be much reduced but would imagine still > 0.

Let us know how you get on,mister big!

So it's happened again. Following various recommendations above I have done the single user thing and it reports drive OK. As it does disk utility when starting up in safe mode. As soon as it tries to do a  normal start the mac stops booting up after a few seconds.

Most functions seen to work in safe mode although mail is very slow and peculiar.

If it's getting hot then open it up and give it a clean.