bootimacmacmacos
I'm running OS X 10.10.1 on a 2007 iMac (Intel based) I have tried to boot into the recovery HD, but it just continues with the boot as if I have never pressed cmd-r. When it does finally boot; it goes to a screen with the spinning beach-ball of death and a blurred background. I have reinstalled the RAM twice, and have reset the NVRAM and PRAM.
Any help or suggestions are appreciated!
Your own advice is fairly good in this scenario.
There is a possibility that you have just some serious file system corruption, but usually Disk Utility should catch that. If you want, you can boot into single user mode (CMD S on boot) and it will give you a little file system cleanup command you can run
fsck -fy and then press enter, when it finishes you reboot.
If this doesn't help, reinstalling after performing a backup is not a bad idea because it will isolate it to a software or hardware issue. The hard drive going over some area repeatedly could be just file system screw ups, but usually repeated noises are a bad sign for a hard drive, clicking etc.
If the problem comes back after the reinstall you definitely want to look into a new hard drive. Four years is not an uncommon life span for some hard drives.
Also just a quick point of clarification, the S.M.A.R.T status doesn't predict all failures, it just presages specific ones it can determine. Just because it isn't telling you your drive is failing doesn't mean it wont. Keeping everything backed up is a really good idea at this point.
Sounds like some part of the display sub-system (video card or display driver circuitry) has gone bad.
All the iMac G4 "lampshade" models have mini-VGA out ports, get an adapter and try connecting it to an external display.
Caveat -- if it's the display logic circuitry itself (as opposed to the LCD panel driver circuitry), you may get exactly the same static on an external display.
Best Answer
The Hard Drive Failed... Went to apple and they told me :(