iMac will not boot up

[junior279]

My iMac will not boot up. It gets to the gray screen with the apple icon and stays there. I tried to start up in safe mode by pressing the shift key but this does not work either. Can I reinstall snow loeopard by putting it in the cd drive? thanks for any help

[tokenuser]

Try it.
You had everything backed up right?

You used to be able to boot with the orig cd and back up stuff to other media. Seems like this would be a piece of cake for one of those apple "geniuses"..

[junior279]

i have tried to reinstall osx but the install keeps failing. I have used the disk utility to repair the disc. Each time i get a different message. One time i get a message the disc is repaired and the next time i get a message saying it can't be repaired. Does this mean my hard drive is bad?

[revision3fan]

insert an original Snow Leopard disk and select that disk as a startup item - or - Try holding down "c" so optical disk boots. Then back up as much data as possible.

[angelbunny]

Originally Posted by junior279

i have tried to reinstall osx but the install keeps failing. I have used the disk utility to repair the disc. Each time i get a different message. One time i get a message the disc is repaired and the next time i get a message saying it can't be repaired. Does this mean my hard drive is bad?

are you trying to repair osx or install osx (format your computer)? if the later then in disk utility repartition the drive. After that it should install no problem.