IMac Finder crawling, unusable even after troubleshooting. help!

Torturously slow Finder in my Intel iMac 2.16ghz OS 10.4.11.
It can take it over a minute to load basic Finder windows. It can take five minutes to get from command- print to actually printing a photo from iPhoto, running the Spinning Beachball of Death for a minute or two each time something is clicked (drop-down menu, etc). Even trying to scroll, or move a window, brings up SBOD for interminable periods before it responds. Spotlight is slow and unreliable. Very slow to start up, very slow to log in. Again, SBOD between all actions. It's been gradually more slow over a couple months, but now it suddenly became unusable.
Safe Boot doesn't change it at all.
Plenty of free HD space and RAM, those aren't an issue.
What i have done, all ineffective:
• run Repair Permissions and Disk Utility (First Aid). No problems found.
• tossed Finder prefs and sidebar prefs
• tried Safe Boot. NO CHANGE whatsoever.
• tried another user account. It was faster in some tests i did, such as iPhoto operations, but that user has only a fraction of the files. And there were still random inexplicable Finder slowdowns while loading Finder windows etc., slow to quit apps, etc... just not as bad as in my User.
• removed all startup items from my login, which was all 3rd-party stuff.
• since slowdowns seem to have started with a Lexmark wireless-network printer install a few months ago, i trashed everything i could find having to do with lexmark (the printer was junk and i got rid of it within 6 weeks anyway).
• I updated the Wacom Tablet driver that i know was outdated (however, i don't have the tablet hooked up).
• i disconnected off all non-essential peripherals- everything except the keyboard ( a MacAlley, with an apple mouse) and the DSL modem.
• Tried Safe Boot again after all of above. No change.
i watched Activity Monitor. Very little CPU usage shown at any given time. However, during the slowdowns, Monitor shows "not responding" for relevant applications i've tried to do something in, including Finder and also something called "System UI Server". Eventually, the app responds and the "not responding" goes away in activity monitor.
other details that may be relevant:
• this iMac sometimes freezes up with what looks like a logic board/graphics chip problem... suddenly video goes awry and clusters a lot of fragmented graphics at top of screen, with rest of screen black. The only way to recover is a hard shutdown, either by holding the power button down or unplugging it.
I really don't want to have to re-install the OS if not necessary, as my install disk is 10.4.3 and i'd have to re-update it all the way to 10.4.11 (i have found i have to do a couple intermediate combo updates to avoid problems).
Do y'all think this is an OS problem, a hardware problem, or what?
Suggestions of what to do now?
PS, urgent, cuz i need to print (or at least export to a flash drive, to move to my iBook) a bunch of images i need for a studio tour.... tomorrow!

What if i boot this clone on my laptop (a G4 iBook with the same amount of RAM) and see how it runs?
Intel iMac 2.16ghz, iBook G4 1.3ghz
Won't work, unfortunately. The clone carries an Intel-specific version of Tiger, which won't run on your PPC iBook.
And if i boot from the clone on the iMac and it runs fine (or, at least, as it was running when the backup was made), that would specifically incriminate the iMac's hard drive, not its other hardware, wouldn't it?
Yes, and so potentially a good diagnostic tool, but I'm not sure it would be totally safe. If the problem is instead bad RAM in the iMac, and you ran the clone from there, I think there would be a chance that the clone could become corrupted. You would then lose your only backup.
It would be nice if there were an "extra" external drive available. That way you could use the iBook to make a second identical "test" clone on it, using your current iMac clone as the source. You could then boot the iMac from the 2nd clone as you proposed, without fear of losing your only backup.
Regarding your install DVD(s):
Intel iMac 2.16ghz OS 10.4.11.
This machine came with grey machine-specific DVDs, I believe 10.4.7 or later.
All i have is my 10.4.3 full retail install DVD.
That is PPC specific, as well as being an earlier Tiger version than the one that came with your machine. It will not re-install Tiger on your Intel iMac.
Disk Utility says HD has no problems (run booted from DVD).
I'm surprised at this. I didn't think an Intel mac would boot from a retail Tiger DVD even just to run Disk Utility.
I'd suggest obtaining the original install disks for your iMac even if you eventually install Leopard. They contain the Apple Hardware Test, and also the original bundled software set, should you ever need to re-install these. Unlike retail DVDs, they should be inexpensive - call Apple and ask; have your serial number available.

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