Mac/intel crashed

I woke my Desktop Mac up & got a spinning wheel. Everything froze.
I turned off w/ power button.
Gave it a few minutes & tried a safe start. Got to pass code pg. entered pass code page & got to my screen. Had dock, but all icons on my usual screen were missing & got a spinning wheel.
After 20 min. I shut down again w/ power button & disconnected all plugs.

Reconnected all plugs, tried again. Got to pass ode page & tried restart. It went to lt blue screen & got stuck we pinning wheel. Froze again. Shut off w power button. Disconnected everything again.

Someone told me to reconnect only w/ my mouse & power. & try again.

Any other suggestions!
Thank god I have a pad, though its pretty old too.
JT

1. Don't shut off with power button.
2. Sounds like your Hard drive is failing.
3. Get into safe mode, make a backup of your critical data, if you can. Don't mess with it much, if you can. Just backup.
4. You can try safe mode and download/install Onyx (I'd download it to an external device like a USB stick or external drive, if you have one, not the internal drive so that you don't overwrite your data. It's at risk.)

Tell us what Mac, what version OS X you have next time you get here. I hope you have a backup of the drive, it doesn't sound good.

Agree with Jake. That really sounds like a failing hard drive for sure.

Since writing & b4 your responses, I restarted w/ just the keyboard/ mouse. It started fine, I got all my icons . I cleaned my desktop, backed up my documents.
Am using an old Mactor one touch, but I can't find the manual, the button the front doesn't seem to do anything, the app I have for it doesn't show anything in the box when I open it. It does show the icons of the 3 devices I baced up on it , so I backed up manually important documents. How do I backup my iTunes & iPhoto libraries?

I also did a disk utility check. It said it was fine, but I did a repairs permission anyways.

How would I shut off if I don't use the power button & it freezes again?

It's an
iMac
Intel core 2 duo
2.66 ghz processor
Os10.6.8

Still has 22gb available out of 319 capacity
I took a pict. Of the About this Mac & saved it on the external HD too.

It seems to be working fine so far....
Was going to try hooking up the Ethernet next & try going online...

22 of 319 is not enough. Clean up to get about 45 free (15%) and it should run better. Get Onyx and clean it up. Powering off leaves junk on the drive that just makes it worse. In eight years I've used the power button twice. And that was probably two too many.