Mac Won't Start up(Forced Shutdowns)

Okay I don't have Apple Protection plan to start.
I have a 24 inch imac with 320GB hard drive.
One day as I was visiting my normal sites everything froze except for the cursor and I forced my computer to shut down by holding down the power button for 10 seconds. Then it took about 10 minutes to start up fully and I opened safari up and it froze again and then I force shut down the computer again.
After it refused to start up again I looked up on my iphone how to safe boot the computer and shut it down and tried to safe boot it. It posted up a bunch of white text and then stopped and restarted but then did nothing.
Eventually I did a disk erase and reinstalled leopard. It worked for about a day and a half before I had to install some system updates and then it froze again and after rebooting it, it wouldn't start up again. I then erased the drive again, but the install wasn't working anymore.
I then tried installing with leopard and that worked(though again, briefly) and then wouldn't install again. Finally I did a Zero Out erase and then it worked and I held off updating anything until I figured out a lot of my java apps weren't working and so tried doing just vital updates and then nothing. I then tried a 7 pass zero out. Nothing. I finally did a 35 pass zero out and nothing.
I am at my wits end now.
Edit: Oh just to add. Before we erased the hard drive the first time, it said the hard drive was completely full(despite me having about 30-40 gb free beforehand)
Message was edited by: bigugly73

The 7 and 35 pass options would not have helped you beyond the singe-pass zero out data.
I think your hard drive is starting to fail. It seems to work well enough so that you can do an installation after erasing, but continued use of it seems to cause data corruption, which is probably why it starts to not run properly after a short while.
Here are some things you can try, if you have not already. Reset PRAM
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
and if that does not help, reset SMC (power management)
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
which is unplugging the iMac and reconnecting using a precise procedure. You should disconnect ALL cables when you do this. If you have been using a crowded or old power strip, you should connect it directly to a wall power outlet for this test. Power it up with nothing connected, except for power cord. If the iMac is currently in an non-bootable state, connect only your keyboard/mouse and try to do another erase and install. See if you are able to get it to boot up and run reliably. If all is well, you can connect your other peripheral (USB/FireWire) devices; peripherals can sometimes cause conflict, so if the problem returns after they are connected, try to figure out if one of them is causing this problem.
If your iMac still does not run reliably, after an SMC reset with only keyboard/mouse connected, then the most likely cause is a faulty hard drive.

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