Is my iMac dying? Cant boot OSX or in safe mode! Please help!

[Gallo]

Hi, hopefully someone can help me. I have an imac (2008) running Leopard 10.5.4 and the other day i went to power it up and it is now just hanging on the blue screen with rotating gears appearing every so often!

I cannot boot in safe mode (hangs on blue screen also) but can boot from the install DVD and windows XP on the HD partition. Single user mode also works.

I have run disk utility from the install DVD and it advises the disk appears to be OK. But it does give me an error when i try to repair permissions - The underlying task reported failure on exit. Not sure if this has anything to do with it or not.

Not sure what else to do, I have thought of reinstalling the OS with an archive and install but am afraid I will lose my files as I have not backed up in the last 6 months or so.

I have searched many discussion groups and apples support and knowlegebase site with no luck!

Any help or suggestions, much appreciated! Thanks

 

[Namnorkimo]

Visit a friend with a Mac. Connect your Mac to the friends Mac via Firewire. Hold down the F key after Start. Friends Mac will now be able to see your Mac as a simple Firewire harddisk. Try to backup all files you need and then install OsX on your Mac clean and new.

 

[Gallo]

Thanks Namnorkimo, that is a good option but its quite diffcult for me to get another mac hooked up via firewire so I was hoping someone might know what is causing the problem. I am worried the HD is banjaxed

 

[Gallo]

In the end I did the backup via firewire and another mac and a new external drive. Then did an archive and install. All seems to be working well now.. My backup lesson has been learned! Its Time machine all the way from now on

 

[Namnorkimo]

Okay!