i have a 1.2gb G4 tower and just recently i have started encountering a slight problem on startup - its takes forever to load! it used to be pretty sharpish but now simply takes far tooooooo long. the desktop appears with no icons and the cursor just keeps spinning. does anybody know how to cure this little problem i have? thanks for any help.

Try logging in as another admin user (or root if it's enabled, or Single User Mode if you have no other admin accounts/root) and remove the files:

/Users/your_user_name/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
&
/Users/your_user_name/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist