IMac freezing, white screen

For the last week now, my iMac 24" has been freezing up while doing small tasks - emptying trash, moving things on the desk top, iTunes songs will stutter or pause for a long time during play, opening programs... I try CmdOptEsc to get to a force quit. I cannot get there. The computer will not respond with mouse clicks or keyboard input. The computer gets very warm during all this.
I hold in the power button. It finally shuts down. When I go to start it back up, 3 times now, it has come up to a white screen (pre the apple logo showing up ...) but then does not continue to start up. I have to - again - do a hard shut down and restart. So far, upon the second try during these instances, it does start back up and loads everything.
I am waiting to get my install discs (they were missing when I got the computer back in Feb). I read on here that I should do a repair from the discs. I will try that.
Any other feedback would be greatly helpful. If I need to send this computer in - do I bring it back to the retailer I got from? Or do I need to send it back into Apple?

Hold Shift Key upom booting, this might work and if you get in, copy your Users folders off to a storage drive as soon as possible.
Reboot normally and see if that fixed your problem, look at Disk Utility > Repair
If your good with fixing Mac's you likely can fix this issue yourself, but if not your going to have to take it in for data recovery/service/repair.
Look at "gray screen" here:
 Cheat sheet to help diagnose and fix your Mac
 Data recovery efforts explained
 Most commonly used backup methods explained
Drives, partitions, formatting w/Mac's + PC's
How to reinstall just OS X or erase/install OS X

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Just registered but this is the closest thread to what I am experiencing with my iMac.
I have a 2003 iMac G4 1,25Ghz 17".
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this annoying issue - it takes several attempts to get
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For example, first thing in the morning, I press the
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Iain
< Edited by Host >

Update:
Have had the iMac powered on for two days and nights and there have been no problems at all. It goes to sleep and wakes from sleep fine. No funny noises or smells!
Just the power up issue. Please help!
Thanks in advance.
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Message was edited by: AMILLIANZE

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Hello.
I've recently changed HDD in my iMac to OCZ Vertex 2 SSD in a local Apple service. Everything was OK until today. I woke up my iMac from Sleep, it showed the beachball and became frozen and unresponsive. I pressed Power button to switch it off. After that I've pressed Power button again to switch it back on. But... all I could see was a White Screen.
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True :-)
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