Is my iBook overheating??

My iBook is only 5 mos. old, but yesterday (after surfing the net for a while) the fan came on (1st time I've noticed it kicking on). I shut down for a while to be safe. When I tried powering back on it did nothing- at all. I tried again, this time holding down the power button for a few seconds. It made the normal start up noise, then the fan came back on, the power light blinked once, then it made a strange whistle like noise and then nothing. I tried again, this time it powered on but took forever to boot up. (My battery is fully charged during all this). What's happened to my iBook???
iBook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Hi, Jennifer. to Apple Discussions.
How long has it been since you did any hard drive maintenance?
Try booting into Safe Mode. This will take quite awhile longer than a normal startup because it does a file check and repair of the hard disk.
You will see your normal desktop. Once completely started up in Safe Mode, restart normally, and go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility. Click on the top hard drive icon in the left sidebar and note the S.M.A.R.T. status at the bottom right of the pane. What does it say?
Select the named boot volume (usually "Macintosh HD," unless you have renamed it) in the left sidebar, and repair permissions on it.
See if a little hard drive maintenance helps things out.

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