OS X Utilities loading wheel

[alonnx1]

Trying to factory reset my iMac i5 21.5 inch, mid 2011. Every time I try to go through the process of holding cmd + R and turning it on, the mouse turns into the wheel of fortune and won't let me select anything. I tried waiting for about an hour and it didn't go away. I attached an image of the problem i'm having.

Any help would be awesome,
Thanks

 

[chscag]

Trying to factory reset my iMac i5 21.5 inch, mid 2011. Every time I try to go through the process of holding cmd + R and turning it on, the mouse turns into the wheel of fortune and won't let me select anything. I tried waiting for about an hour and it didn't go away. I attached an image of the problem i'm having.

Any help would be awesome,
Thanks

My guess is you could have a bad or failing hard drive. Most of the 2011 iMac i5 21.5" machines came stock with a 500 GB Seagate 3.5" 7200 RPM drive. Many of them failed within several years of use. I had the same exact machine as yours and the hard drive failed within 2 years of use. Apple store replaced it with a WD drive. My machine at the time was still covered by Apple Care.

What you can try to do is use your original install media (probably Snow Leopard) to see if you can start (boot) the machine from the DVD. If you can, run Disk Utility and verify the hard drive to see what it says.