Mac mini goes crazy upon booting

hello all,
I have a powerpc 1.25 mac mini which had os x (10.3.4 (i think)) and needed an app (linotype explorer) which required a newer version of os x. I upgraded it with a 10.4.3 disk i had and all seemed to be fine. After a restart or two however, things have gone pearsheaped.
I can login fine though when the desktop is displayed, there are no icons on the desktop, no menu bar on the top of the screen (though the spotlight icon appears) and the dock appears occasionally. Interestingly finder does not appear to be open. If i attempt to open any programs from the dock they fail.
I have been able to boot the mac into safe mode, I have ran the updater and installed os 10.4.6 and the other required updates. I have repaired the permissions on the disk and have carried out the hardware test on the installation disk. Still nothing seems to work.
Does anyone have any ideas?
cheers.
mac mini PowerPC G41.25 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Since you can boot into safe mode your problem involves a program you have selected to auto-start or a startup item.
So, boot into safe mode again and 1) open the root Library folder and drag the StartupItems folder to the desktop, 2) open the System Control Panels, select the Accounts icon, select the Login Items, and remove them. (You’ll probably want to jot down the names of them all so you can select them again and if you have a lot of them you may want to just create a new account)
Now restart your computer - it will probably start fine. Now you’ll want to slowly add things back until you find which item(s) aren’t compatible with Tiger.
Note: If you have Adobe’s Creative Suite - remove Cue from the startupItems folder and also look in the PrefPanes folder of your Library folder and remove the Cue item. Do this first and restart. Then return to the above steps if you still have problems.

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Wake reason =
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AppleBCM5701Ethernet:
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