iMac Snow Leopard Reinstallation Problem

Today, I decided to reinstall Mac OS X Snow Leopard on my iMac, to have a fresh & new copy of Mac OS. I've done this before on my Macbook, and it worked perfectly.

The iMac would not read the original Reinstall DVD that came with it. Instead, it would eject it, though it would work it on another Mac. But when I inserted my Snow Leopard disk that I bought separately, it worked.

However, when I entered the reinstall screen, it is extremely slow and I nearly can't use it. I did already use the Disk Utility to erase the hard disk files. So, it is extremely slow, and it wouldn't install either. All I get is the amour of time left, but it doesn't change, just gives me a waiting spinning wheel. It's been stuck on the screen for several hours.

The iMac was bought in January, I believe. What should I do?? This is very weird. Should I take it to the Apple Store, or is there a way to fix it?

Some more information… It says Time Remaining: 30 minutes, and the blue line is animating, but not moving, and nothing changes… I've tried to restart the installation several times.

Did you reformat the drive? If you just bought it in January it's still under warranty. You can take it to the Genius Bar.

I tried to reinstall Snow Leopard on my iMac and it took 14 hours, but I didn't erase the files and format the drive.

Restart the install from the disc, this time, erase the hard drive with Disk Utility first (available from the Utilities menu, shortly after you start clicking through the installer).

Next time, don't bother reinstalling. This is a bad habit we bring with us from Windows and it just isn't necessary with UNIX-based OSes. If you want a clean start, the best way to do it is to create a new user account and then delete the old one.