Boot problems - can I "Archive and Install" to back-up and then reformat?

Hi all!
I'm having booting problems with my PowerBook 15".
I've ran the hardware/disk utility tests and everything seems fine. The problem is, I get a blue-screen with the spinning sun-dial or sthing. It keeps spinning and spinning! I tried going into safe-mode, but it doesn't work!
My question is, can I do an "Archive and Install"... load a fresh copy of OS X on my PowerBook so that I can back-up my data? Would this work?
Please help, thanks!

I took the risk and managed to install Tiger over my previous OS successfully! Afterwards, I backed up everything as fast as I could, and then did a Clean Install. Worked like a charm! haha..
However... after doing the Clean Install, I realised that I am UNABLE to install "Windows Media Player for Mac OX X" on to my machine!?!?! I downloaded "WindowsMediaInstaller.bin", and opened it with StuffIt Expander. StuffIt Expander just hung at the "Preparing" mode and says "Preparing..."
Anyone else has/had the same problem? Please help, as a number of online radio sites require Windows Media Player to run, and now I can't access them!! =(

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