Grey screen on startup - safe boot works

Hi. I have a Mac Pro (2008) that starts up with the apple logo and the spiining wheel. Then the screen goes blank. I have tried everything at:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Interestingly it does work in safe boot mode (but lots of the functionality isn't there).
Disk utility doesn't find any problems. Hardware check from the original disks is very slow but says the hardware is working.
I even got a new disk and put a clean install of Mountain Lion, and got the same behaviour.
I think I'd like to try various options of what is disabled by safe mode, to find the culprit, but I can't seem to find what that may be.
Thanks,
David

I did something better; I erased the disk and did a clean install of Mountain Lion. (I had previously bought a new disk becuase I though that it might be a disk failure). But I still get the same problem. In fact I got the problem during the install. But I could finish the install doing  safe boot.  Again, I can do a safe boot, but not a standard one. And this occurs before the login.
The hardware check from the original disk says that there are no problems with the hardware.
I will now try a clean install of Snow Leopard and see whether that works.
I'm guessing that it is a hardware problem, because Mountain Lion has worked fine for a few months. But I've no hints as to what it may be.
Thanks again,
David

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