Can't get to my desktop

Yesterday I was unable to get my laptop to respond after it went to sleep. I tried using the mouse but nothing reponded. I did a force quit and after the log on screen came up, I entered my password and got nothing except the grey apple, the sound of the hard drive chugging away for a loooooong time, then the log on screen returned. Tried logging on again with the same result. Subsequently used the Tiger install disk to run Disk Utility and repaired permissions and repaired the disk (which the program said was not needed). Tried starting from the machine's startup disk and continue to get the grey apple screen and spinning gear. Even tried changing the password. I eventualy get to the log on screen after a very long time, but can't get beyond it.
This seemed to start after my most recent auto update of OSX 10.4.11, which had an error on install and, according to auto update, couldn't be completed. I tried to reinstall the update, but the auto updater said I had no new updates to install. Meanwhile the machine operated normally for about a week, then this. The other thing I did during this time was delete my Firefox browser, which had become non-functioning prior to this whole ordeal. Don't know if any of this is related.
I'd like not to lose everything with a new install...any ideas?

Boot from the Install CD/DVD then after you choose your language, a Menubar will show up top, find Disk Utility and run it from there, do these 2 in order.
Using Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later to verify or repair disks...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672
About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751

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