all of a sudden my ibook G4 stopped being able to boot past the startup screen (with the apple and the spinning wheel). everytime i reboot the computer it sits on that screen for hours. my computer has about 1.5GB of space left on it. there are important documents on it i need to access a.s.a.p.!

here's what i've done so far:

1. with the OSX install disc, tried to repair the permissions and disc from disc utility (with permissions it just stalled, with the disc a "non-fixable" disc error appeared)

2. booted into single user mode (command line interface) and tried fsck (or something like that - can't remember). it said it repaired everything, and when fsck was run again it said there were no problems. computer still wouldn't boot past the startup screen.

3. tried again to repair permissions and the disc with disc utility. this time it worked but the computer still wouldn't boot past the startfup screen.

4. tried re-mounting from the command line interface. still no luck.

if anyone has any suggestions or can tell me how to backup documents using the install disc, i would be tremendously thankful!

thanks.