My imac won't boot up.

[Tempoe]

I have a 24" imac with the dualcore. Yesterday I was pasting something from Illustrator to photoshop and it froze. The ball spun for about 5 mins, force quit would not come up so I held the power button and shut it off. Now only the grey screen comes up like its booting, apple logo and spinning wheel.

I started in safe mode and ran fsck but it seemed to take forever (hours) and never finished.

Any ideas?


Thanks in advance!

 

[r.j.s]

Have you tried resetting the PRAM.

Cmd-Option-P-R on boot until it chimes twice.

 

[Tempoe]

Yes, I did that first
I will give it a few more mins then try starting in S mode again.

 

[richard.mac]

run "fsck -fy" in Single User Mode (press command-S on startup) and wait for it to finish. if it says your volume is repaired do it again until it says its OK. this is the same as booting from the Install DVD and running "Repiar Disk" from Disk Utility which you can do if youd like.

 

[Tempoe]

Yeah, thats the fsck command I ran, it took hours and never finished....how long should it usually take?

EDIT;
Well it completed, and I got the message "The volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired"

Should I try it again, does this mean I need a new HD?