intel imac won't boot up and is freezes when it does

[cakeftw7]

So after about 2+ years of my 24" intel imac working flawlessly, it finally crashed today.

I was working with logic pro 8 on a project when the APP crashed. Then, the whole computer became real slow. I couldn't open anything without getting the spiraling rainbow circle for at least 3+min and even then the app wouldn't launch. So I shut down normally, which took a while.

After I left it off for about a min or so, I tried to boot again just to get stuck on the gray screen with the apple logo. I did some research on my phone (since I currently don't have internet because I'm moving this week) and found out how to reset the pram. I tried it, and this time it got all the way to the blue screen where it got stuck. I tried resetting the pram a second time to finally get to the log in screen but everything was going very very slow. Unusable type of slow. Opening a new finder window took at least 2 mins and everytime I ran my mouse across the idock, it would freeze.

I kept repeating my steps for a while. Then I inserted my os x 10 disk and tried to reinstall, but it scared me off. I don't have anything backed up, and if I lose all my data I think I would die =[

But I did make sure it was booting the correct hd and everything.

I don't know what else to do. If I'm not stuck on the gray or blue screens, my computer is so slow it finally freezes.

Help pls?

I have the 24-inch intel imac that came with the osx 10 disc (not pre-installed)
Currently I'm running 2gb of ram and I was running 10.5.8 (I think)

This might sound crazy but, I kinda got used to all of the internal noises my imac made, and something just doesn't sound right. =[

Any advice would be of great help.

 

[drstauffertnd]

Take your mac to an apple store

Don't fool around with your sensitive data. Take you mac to an expert like those at an Apple Store.

Good luck

 

[drsteve]

Had exactly same problem.
iMac 24", no problem for nearly 2 years.
Suddenly runs slow, beachballs ++, finder freezing and dock 'freezing' also. Sometimes refusing to progress from grey screen or login screen.
Unable to use Force Quit applications and needing repeated hard restarts.
Tried everything, repair permissions, trashing plist files, Apple hardware check reported as fine, DiskWarrior, swapped RAM, zapped PRAM, fsck in single user mode and finally a complete wipe and clean reinstall from original discs. Problem persisted.

Finally tried resetting the SMC and been fine for 3 days now after needing 10+ restarts daily for the previous 4-5 days.

Try reset of SMC below, good luck.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US

Steve