IBook G4 won't finish booting up

I tried to start up my iBook G4 last night (with the power cord, the battery had run out) and when it tried to boot up, it told me that the date & time had been set before March 1, 2001. This is nothing new, I've had it before. When I tried to hit OK, the computer is still "thinking"...with the little swirly multi-colored spiral thing. I left it alone hoping it would correct itself and it never did. I tried rebooting and even removed the battery to start over but to no avail, it started up with the same problem. I also tried to hit alt-apple-escape but it wouldn't work either.
Pleeeeease tell me it's not fried. I can't handle losing everything on that computer.

I don't know of any way to recover from this kind of problem. If you have access to another computer and an external Hard Drive, you could try booting the iBook from an external Hard Drive (the other computer is for installing the OS on the external if it is not already there). After booting from the external, transfer any data that you want to save and reformat.
Other than that, I'm stumped. Good Luck.

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