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Grey screen, 3 beeps, the grey screen 1 beep, then completely dead not even the sound of the fan starting up. AND THEN.... Just before heading to bed last night I tied again Firstly removing both ram (2x2gb) tried rebooting and although no startup chime I did get a grey screen with the message of 'computer had to shut down previously'. I pushed in one of the ram and the imac (2008 with ssd upgrade) started. I then restarted with both sets of ram and got the grey screen 3 beeps (bad ram from what Ive read here) I then took out the ram that worked and tied rebooting with the one that didn't, grey screen again. So I put the bad RAM to the side and tried restarting twice by placing the good RAM in both slots alternately to make sure it was the ram and not the slots. Once satisfied it was the faulty RAM I ordered a replacement 2gb ram on eBay for £7 which should arrive in the next day or two.
Got up this morning and imac still working fine on the single 2gb. So after that long waffle I'd say.. simply keep going at it no matter how pointless it seems and you may be lucky.
Ps I forget to mention that when the computer was really dead I was trying numerous keyboard shortcuts and although there was no start up chime it was while holding down the shift key while continually hitting the startup button that got me over the first hurdle.
Good luck - Inky Bob