Intel 2006 Imac will not boot in anyway

[VonHeinrich]

I have a 20" Intel Imac that will not boot, not even from a CD.

Interestingly I never get the chime on boot up, I hear the hard drive and the combo drive spinning, and just wind up with the spinning wheel of death.

I've tried unplugging for 30 minutes, all the different various ways to boot (safe, CD, clearing PRAM)

Any ideas? Could it be the PRAM battery causing this?

 

[Fongstarr]

It could be the harddrive. I have a 24" iMac which is the same year and my harddrive was messed up and I had to take it to some guy to get my memory extracted and put into another harddrive.

I could be wrong though.

 

[VonHeinrich]

Hd

I lost a HD before on this puppy, but I did get a chime and was able to boot up from the CD, so I'm thinking that's not the problem.

 

[VonHeinrich]

Solution: wrong keyboard

I was using a newer version Mac keyboard which my iMac did not recognize. ie None of the keys I pressed had the intended effect on boot up. I plugged in the old key board and now have the chime and can boot from the DVD drive!

The bottom line is a bad boot sector on the hard drive.