My mac is in a seriously ailing state and I need to turn it over to a professional. Has anyone here used any professional services for this type of thing? Does anyone have a shop or an individual they can recommend?

This all started while using pro tools. My screen faded out and I received a message that I needed to restart my computer. I was able to restart and I tried running repair disc in the disc utility program however it could not complete the task. I reviewed pertinent info on apple's solutions database and while trying various remedies the situation got progressively worse and it appears that my computer is now completely fucked. I cannot start up OSX. I cannot do a safe boot. I cannot boot from the startup disc. The only thing I can do is startup in single user mode.

Is the mac store the best option for thing kind of thing?

Do you know the status of your warranty? Do you have Applecare? The Apple store is probably your best bet, though there may be better places that I don't know about.

What happens when you try to boot from the OS X install disc?

Do you have an extra hard drive around? It might be worthwhile to see if it's the hard drive that's hosed, or other computer hardware. Because it it's the former, then you wouldn't need to bring your computer in to the shop--just the hard drive.

ETA: Does it run fine in single user mode? Did you know if it's a hard drive vs. other hardware issue?

The computer is three years old and no Applecare so the warranty is not an option.

I think the problem is the hard drive and the file structure on the HD. After some fiddling I was able to reboot on the system disc and run the repair disc utility. Surprisingly it ran and said the HD was ok. However, it still will not start in regular mode but I can get it to start in Safe mode. At this point I'm just trying to backup what data is not already backed up but the computer is VERY temperamental. If I try to copy large files from the computer's HD to my spare, backup external HD it will crash again. If I try to copy anything onto the imac's HD it will also crash. Sometimes it still crashes in safe mode without doing anything.

Considering doing the reinstall of system software from the startup disc. Don't want to erase the HD but I don't think that this option will do this. Also don't want to make the problem worse.

Things seem to be so temperamental that I want to leave it to a professional so I don't make things worse. Priority 1 is saving what I haven''t backed up since my last back up in April.

Thanks for your advice...

A couple suggestions: Diskwarrior can be very helpful, for fixing software-related hard drive problems. It might be best to get a new hard drive, and try to retrieve the data when your Mac isn't booted up from that drive. Do a clean install on a new hard drive, and then connect your bad drive to the computer, run Diskwarrior on it, and hopefully you can save the data. If it's a hardware malfunction with the hard drive, there may be nothing you can do.

As far as bringing it to a pro at this point--that wouldn't be a bad idea. In any case I wouldn't try to startup from the bad drive. If you know how to install hard drives, I don't think you'd be making anything worse if you remove the bad drive and install a new one. Then you can see if there's other hardware trouble, or just trouble with the hard drive. You could bring the bad hard drive to a data retrieval service, or connect it to your Mac (but don't startup from it) and try yourself.