Need help - Aluminum iMac won't boot!

[Ino]

Hi guys -

Shut down my iMac this morning and when I powered it on, it doesn't even make it to the grey screen. No indication of the backlight turning on at all.

I can hear the hard drive spin up as I push the power button, but nothing else. No startup chime.

At first I thought it was the RAM upgrade (installed about a month ago), but the same still occurs after I reinstalled the iMac's stock RAM. I can see a little green LED looking through the bottom door for installing RAM, so it doesn't seem to be a power issue.

Tried to boot using Leopard disc, but now that's stuck in there too. Target disk mode, resetting PRAM, single-user mode, verbose mode, all unresponsive.

Some specs:
Aluminum iMac
2.8 Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme
2x1GB RAM stock / upgraded to 2x2GB after
500GB hard drive

Any advice would be greatly appreciated...

 

[Hellhammer]

Dead hard drive? Can you hear any unusual/usual noises like the apple thing and so on. Hard to say... Usual if the HD fails it still opens for somewhere, maybe it's in processor

 

[Ino]

No unusual noises...I hear the same mechanical sounds that I usually hear at startup before the actual chime...it just doesn't get any further than that.