Stuck in White Screen with pin-wheel on start-up

Hi everyone,
Have been having a few probs the last days, most likely since upgrading to 10.5
I restarted my G5 today because an application kept failing to launch. It's now not booting up, it is stuck on the white screen with the apple logo and pin wheel and doesn't go to the blue screen. After a few minutes the fans have built up to full speed but nothing else is happening.
I have noticed that following the start up sound (black screen) there is a flash of a folder icon (in Classic style format) followed by a question mark (both very temporary, split second) before going to the white/grey screen.
I'm not sure what to do from here and would appreciate any suggestions.
Many thanks.
m@

Hi Samsara - thanks for the comforting comments!
I'm going to go ahead as you recommend - it's a two hour trip to my nearest Apple store (and even then it's in Yikesville so I'm expecting Vikings for tech specialists but we'll see!)
With regard to a new machine, I feel like the day is looming - I use the computer predominantly to run audio recording software which, with plugins, is very CPU intensive and I keep hearing about how the later machines are so much more capable. The other option maybe to increase my RAM but again, for the cost perhaps I should bite the bullet and upgrade the system totally. I don't know, maybe I'll have talked myself out of that option by morning!
Happily, in a stroke of rare genius, I had shifted key files to an external HD earlier this week and have been running Time Machine so there is a full back-up of everything sitting on my desk.
But I do appreciate you highlighting that a new HD is relatively inexpensive and the suggestion that I don't necessarily need to go breaking the piggy bank to get a new machine... it was certainly feeling that way earlier today!
Cheers - Matt

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Stuck in White Screen with pin-wheel on start-up

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