problems with my mac-- not sure what to do?

[herplover22]

hello,

i purchases a refurbished mac on ebay a little over a year ago, and it was working fine until a few months ago. i was just surfing the internet when that stupid rainbow wheel showed up, i figured it had just gotten a little warm and left it alone for a while, when i returned it was still like that, so i just left it and went to bed. when i woke up in the morning the rainbow wheel was still there so i removed the battery(the mac wouldn't power down).

i then tried to power it back up and now all it will do is start up and go straight for the grey screen, the apple shows up and and the spinning dial, andi usually get the grey bar showing up, but it dissapears when it is 3/4 to the whole way full. all the computer does then is stay on the grey screen with the apple and the spinning dial, it will stay like that for days.

anyway i have tried everything the comes up when i search to try and fix the problem
i have tried starting it in safe mode, resetting the Pram?, booting it up to the black screen and then typing in the fsck- whaterver code.


the only thing i havn't tried is reinstalling and that is b/c i dont have the disks for that. i don't know what else to do? i beleive the closest apple store is about an hour and a half away, so would rather not have to drive the whole way there and pay them to tell me what is wrong with it

if i buy a new disk either snow leopard(which is currently installed) or lion, will that fix the problem? would all my stuff be erased(not a big deal really, i am fed up with it at this point and really just want it to work)

or are there any other suggestions?

thanks

 

[harryb2448]

G'day and welcome to the forums. Helps if you provide some information on your pre-loved iMac. Model, OS etc.

However boot from the install discs, assume you got them from the seller, leave Installer and go to Utilities > Disk Utility and run Repair Disk from there and see what is reported. If no joy boot from the disc and hold down 'D' to access Apple Hardware Test and run a complete diagnosis.

No discs you will have to buy some as you were shafted at the time of the sale. Go to eBay and such and make sure you purchase the full retail install DVD of whatever your operating system is.

 

[rabbitjetta]

You can partition your drive so that you can install the new OS on one partition and your files may be saved on the other. From there you can copy the files to the working partition and then delete the old partition.