IMac wont boot after displaying a black screen and then switching off

Help! My iMac screen suddenly went black, with a huge purple cursor and then a text box with hugely magnified text appeared momentarily and then disapeared, (the text block was just the standard "You are now connected to ...... " the name of our Network ) after some time and nothing happening I quit using the power off button, when I came back after a short while and powered up again now I cant get past the white screen with the Apple logo and the spinning disc? No start up tone either.

Yes, boot from the install disc and then use Disk Utility to repair the drive:
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk.

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