Intel iMac trying to die a death

A few of days ago my iMac began to go into the rainbow wheel for any command i gave it, taking up to three minutes to even open a folder.
Then the next day after leaving it to sit overnight, it stopped doing that and everything ran suspiciously fine. The next day, it crashed delivering the "please force a restart" screen in the middle of use completely out of the blue. Since then it has been doing the same thing straight after startup, it gets as far as loading the wallpaper, see here: http://imgur.com/nwIvP.jpg
very worried about it, wondering if anyone has any idea what might be happening?

Welcome to Apple Discussions.
Sorry to hear about the problem, while I can't read the message on the screen you provided it appears to be a Kernel Panic. KP's can be caused by numerous things including RAM that has failed, hard disc failure or even insufficient RAM or HD space. Mac's need between 10-15% of the disk space available so the first thing I'm going to ask is how large is your internal HD and how much available space does it have? Next, please let us know exactly what iMac you have and how it's configured.
I've included and excellent article article for you to begin doing your own troubleshooting. I'd suggest reading it over and seeing where it leads you.
Also please look over this letterand see if this is the message you got.
Regards,
Roger
Message was edited by: rkaufmann87

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