Won't start from Start up Disk- Dead iMac - help!!

Question

Hi,
My iMac at work died today, first it crashed and then the hard disk began to spin and then the fan cut in and it sounded like a jumbo taking off. I used the power switch to turn off, waited a minute turned it back on and it then hung at the blue screen. Did this again two or three times but it still hung, sometimes in different places but always after the apple screen and the spinning thing. I then loaded the system disk and started it up, it loaded the install software screen and then crashes. I started the machine in "Safe Mode", it started properly but then crashed as soon as I tried to anything. I even loaded the startup cd in safe mode but it did the same.
The machine is very basic first generation iMac, no bluetooth, 160gb hd, 17inch 1.6gig 256 meg ram. Using Panther fully updated using Software Update. Nothing special.
Apple Care just wanted £35.00 from me before they would even tell me if I could take it direct to my local Apple Store - I say local but it would be a 100 mile round trip so I thought it best to check first.
Help, I can't even start from start up disk!!!!

Answer 1

Hugo, I had the same thing happen twice. The first thing I did is run the hardware diagnostics to determine if the disk had totally crapped out. This test passed on both occurrences. I then tried to repair the disk by booting from the install disk (hold down the 'c' key while booting) and using the disk utility. The first time I had the problem this fixed it. Last night it happened for the second time, this time repairing the disk failed. I had to erase the disk, reinstall the OS and upgrades and load user files from backup. One tip, don't call AppleCare unless you really want to be annoyed. I had some useless tech explain to me how the hard drive was analogous to a library, the librarian goes home at night with all the books properly in place and some kids come in and move all the books around. When the librarian comes in the next day she cannot do anything because the location of the books do not match the locations identified in her book catalog. So I asked, who these 'kids' are that messed up my disk. He said this just happens. Well this has just happened to this computer twice in a month and its old 9 months old. I have 3 PCs running that have never had this problem, one is 8 years old. One more thing AppleCare categorizes this problem as a software issue, not hardware, so it is not covered, even though it's Apple's software that failed ! You either have to fix it yourself or pay someone to do it for you. Sorry for the digression (as you can tell I'm a little frustrated with Apple), when I was just about done loading user files from backup, the iMac died, will not power backup, nothing, just dead. This is after I just spent 4 hours erasing the disk and reinstalling software and files. Guess I do have a hardware problem now.
Good luck