my two yr. old intel imac (2ghz, 2 gigs of ram) started getting slow out of the blue while running iphoto. thought maybe because the hd was almost full w/video, so i put everything onto an external hd and am now operating w/123gigs of available hd space. well, that did NOTHING! now my desktop won't even build. i just get the grey screen w/the apple and spinner for hours. sometimes instead of the apple, i get either a file w/a question mark on it, or a circle w/a slash through it. (like a no-smoking sign) tried removing ram cards to see if it would work. well, kind of. my desktop would build, but as soon as i try to open an app, i get the eternal spinning pin wheel. great. tried running disk utilities from startup disk. came up w/some errors, and then THAT locked up after 5 hours. aborted that process and then selected "repair disk" and it told me no errors were found. go figure. my next idea was to install osx to an external hd so i could boot from that. can't do that because NOW what happens is when i boot from the install c.d. and try to do an install, i'm locking up (spinning pinwheel) before i can even get to the point where you select which drive you want to install to. 3 times in a row. i thought maybe my hd was fried but now i'm not sure what to think whereas the computer locks up even on an install disc. what a disappointment. i have 2 other macs over 6 years old that are still going strong so i opted out of applecare on this one of course. so..... any of you geniuses have any ideas? i'm all out of 'em.
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is my intel imac dead?
- Thread starter boynigel
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It's not dead, the same thing happened to my G5 iMac. It seems like you are having the same issue I dealt with, at least. Turns out my hard drive failed, I lost all my data and got a new internal hard drive off of Newegg and reinstalled OS X on it. Works fine now, apart from its aging.
Well, at least now (if the issue is the hard drive) you have an excuse to get a big, fast 1 terabyte hard drive to beast out your system with!
What it seemed like was happening was that your hard drive was weak and dying which is why it was so slow. Now that it failed, your computer can't boot from the drive. I know exactly all the screens you've encountered (the folder with the "?", the circle with the slash..), it means it can't boot/nothing to boot off of if I'm not mistaken, and I got that too.
thanks for your response. did it happen REALLY FAST on yours? this all went down fast and came out of nowhere, w/no warning until iphoto started crawling. what am i looking at cost-wise to get a new hd put in?
HD doesn't always warn you. How big you're looking for? You can get good one for less than 50$
i suppose whereas i'm doing a lot of video these days, i'd go for a TB. i would imagine this is a little more involved than changing a hard drive in a tower style computer. what do you think a "pro" would want for labor?
Labor is more than the HD is I guess, so at least 100$ but 80$ if you're very lucky. There are great guides in internet how to do it so it ain't that hard really.
1TB is around 70$ nowadays. It's your choice, save and DIY or pay for pro
i just watched a couple DIY youtube videos and feel confident i can do this myself. two final questions to anyone who can answer- 1) who do you recommend for the best deal on a new HD? 2) is it possible that i had a RAM card go bad, which made my HD sh$t the bed? i have a friend who has on old blue & white mac that swears that it was bad RAM that killed his HD. possible, or hogwash? if this is possible, maybe i'll get some new RAM while i'm at it, but if i can save a few bucks i'd like to just stick to replacing the HD. thanks.
I bet you're REALLY REALLY REALLY glad you copied all of your stuff onto another HDD now aren't you 
I bet you're REALLY REALLY REALLY glad you copied all of your stuff onto another HDD now aren't you
LOL... understatement of the year. i didn't get a chance to save EVERYTHING, but i got the "big ones" saved, which for me are my iPhoto, iMovie, and iTunes libraries. Tons of stuff in those!
Basically the same thing happened to me. Turned out to be a failed HD. Just got my iMac back today in fact.
1. I've always like Western Digital. NewEgg is good place to buy.
2. Sounds quite unbelievable. RAM should've overheated so much that it could kill the HD