[Silencer]

When I start up my imac it just freezes on the grey apple screen with the spinning lines.

I booted for the cd and repaired permissions, but then i tried to verify disk and it says that the disk can't be mount or the disk is not mounted, says the same thing if i try and repair the disk?

Any ideas whats going on?

[malvolio]

Sounds like you have major disk damage. Hopefully it's data damage and not physical damage to the hard drive. How old is your machine? Is it still covered under warranty or Apple Care?
The first thing I would try is getting a copy of the DiskWarrior CD, boot up from that and see if DW can fix your disk directory. I have had excellent results with DW.
Or you can give Drive 10 a try. Some folks have even had good results with Norton Utilities, but NU tends to cause more problems than it cures.