G4 Hangs, Sounds like an Airplane Taking Off

My G4 has been running smoothly on Leopard so far. Lately, though, it has started hanging often... no spinning wheel, no opportunity to force quit... it literally freezes. I hold down the power button to turn it off and then on reboot the fan goes crazy... sounds like an airplane taking off.
I have fixed disk permissions. Reset PMU. Run fsck -fy. And it's still doing it.
I am also running several usb devices through a belkin hub: iPod shuffle, external maxtor 80Gig for time machine, and occasionally a canon powershot camera.
Last time I tried to import photos off the camera it had all kinds of trouble. Had to reboot several times.
I realize this thing is getting old... but my whole life is on it and I can't really replace right now. Any ideas?
Thanks!
Josh

If this is a Mirrored Drive Doors model, the fans are likely working as designed.
There are circuits inside that run the internal fans on their highest setting by default. When the computer is running properly, the software periodically checks the CPU temperature, and sets the fan to an appropriate setting -- almost always less than maximum.
At initial power up, and when the fan hardware is ignored (not turned down) for some large part of a minute, the fan circuits revert to the default, maximum setting to keep the CPU from getting so hot it is damaged. Sure is loud, isn't it!
If you are running 10.4 or later, boot it up (if you can) and check About this Mac > More Info > Diagnostics -- to see if is detecting any failures at startup.
Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder

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Jordan Simkins wrote:
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G4 Hangs, Sounds like an Airplane Taking Off

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