Imac problems, need to erase and reinstall I think??

I have been having problems with my Imac. it is a 24" with I believe a 2.8ghz drive and so on. Anyways when I turn it on it goes to the white screen with the apple and the little moving circle thing. It does this for a while then shuts off. I have my time machine backups on an external drive so no worries there. I had this trouble before and we did a software update and it worked for about 3 weeks then doing it again. I was told if it did it again I need to erase the HD and reinstall OSX from the start but not sure exactly how to do it where i cant get to the main screen or even login screen. Please help.

Sako7STW wrote:
I have been having problems with my Imac. it is a 24" with I believe a 2.8ghz drive and so on. Anyways when I turn it on it goes to the white screen with the apple and the little moving circle thing. It does this for a while then shuts off. I have my time machine backups on an external drive so no worries there. I had this trouble before and we did a software update and it worked for about 3 weeks then doing it again. I was told if it did it again I need to erase the HD and reinstall OSX from the start but not sure exactly how to do it where i cant get to the main screen or even login screen.
Welcome to Apple's discussion groups.
I'd first try booting into "Safe Boot Mode":
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564
If that doesn't help, try "single user mode":
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1492
If neither of these things improves the condition of your Mac, check back for more information.

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