iMac OSX start up troubles

TeleDanz

Registered
Since yesterday my iMac running OS 10.5 won't start up. Note that this is my first mac ever and I am totally not a tech head.

When it starts up, I get a grey screen with the Apple logo and some sort of engine running beneath it. Nothing happens.

I called applesupport but they would only help me if I signed up for this rather expensive Applecare eventhough the mac is less then one year old.

Things I have tried:

- starting up in safe mode by holding left shift key when hearing the start up sound until I see the logo... nothing happens

- Inserting the installation disc, starting up while holding option key, selecting the disc and going to the disc utility. I ran disc repair for the HD, no errors. I ran disc permissions, I get: Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit

- I tried reinstalling osx using archive and install (I actually don't know if it keeps my documents :, I don't have backups ) and here I got the same error. Installation failed.


I don't know what could have caused this problem, I did do the following: I option clicked the mac disc on the dashboard, and I got this window with beneath where permissions is there was a lock, not knowing what it does, I clicked it but could not click it to it's previous option. (don't remember what I was looking for) Could this be causing all these problems?

Anyhow, any help would be very much appreciated. I don't know anyone with a mac who can help me.
 
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