Startup Hang

[DarkSaint]

I usually leave my computer on all day because I run my website off of it. While I am not at the computer, I run the SETI screensaver-type program so it works units while I am away. I come home and I have a blank screen but the computer is still on, I can click and it all comes back up. Occasionally, the computer will not respond, and I have to cold restart.

Well, after a few times this happened, my computer decided to just stop starting up. I hit the power button, the screen loads, normal process, and then drops to the desktop, where the dock slides over and the menu bar drops down and then it's go time... well, the computer hangs there and no dock slides over, no menubar comes up, the cursor alternates every 5 or so seconds between spinning colored beachball and mouse pointer. I hear disk activity but nothing loads, I left it on for 3 hours to see if something would load and nothing did.

I relocated all the preference files (/Library/Preferences/, /System/Library/Preferences, /Users/****/Library/Preferences) and the computer still hangs. Any fixes? I have run fsck and Norton (from OS 9)

iMac 700MHz LCD, 256MB of RAM, Mac OS X 10.2.3

[DarkSaint]

If I were to reinstall, what are the most important parts of the system to keep my preferences stable? /Users and my Applications I am guessing...since nothing is working.