How prevent Finder Hang in 10.4.7?

Question

My problem probably has the same cause as others in this list but the symptoms are simpler. I have a G4 and a G5 Mac connected in a local network via a MIH-130 XRouter Pro and both are on 10.4.7. My wife and I use either machine but we have a single copy of each family database on one of the Macs, with an alias on the other. For the last two years this has worked fine but not since 10.4.7.
On the G4 I have an alias for Pictures and Movies and also some in Documents. If the G5 is up, then G4 Finder works fine and opens G5 with an icon. If the G5 is sleeping, and no G5 icon , then on clicking G4 Finder to Home, the Home folder has 2 modes of opening.
Mode 1. The Home folder opens and the alias are shown (as alias). Double clicking an alias causes an attempt to open the G5 but CPU hangs with 1 minute timeout.
Question: Can someone tell me which parameter in which plist file determines the timeout so I can reduce it to 10 seconds.
Mode 2. The Home folder does not show and the disk of death spins for ever. I can relaunch Finder but effect returns whenever I try to show the Home folder. If I turn on the G5, Finder works again but my neighbor has a laptop as the second machine and that may be elsewhere. Almost catastrophic.
After 10.4.7 installation it started in mode 2. I fooled around with Finder parameters and it changed to mode 1. After more fooling it reverted to mode 2 and I do not seem to able to get back to mode 1.
Question: Any ideas on which parameter may be causing mode 2.
I have reported this problem to Apple but with no response, who knows ?
G4 Desk and iMac G5   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

Answer 1

Many thanks to Scott Micciche for the helpful reply. Here is my feedback.
I first just: removed com.apple.finder.plist, restart, restored Finder options.
Major differences in root dictionary key/value pairs: old 53 new 10, later 21.
G4 had changed to Mode 1. Good.
Now, how do I reduce the timeout in mode 1?
However!
If in Mode 1, I double click Pictures, then during timeout looking for G5, relaunch Finder, I get mode 2. That is after any relaunch, Finder shows same window but with home directory empty and wait disk spins for ever. There is no way out of this, except to wake up G5. Clearly, I can avoid doing this but is the result a clue to the original problem? It is easy to double click the alias by accident and the wait is very tedious, so a good reason to reduce timeout.
I did use your command to delete .Ds_Store (but with rm -fi, to see what I was doing) but, although it deleted several hundred files, it did not affect my problem.