[HM] Disk permissions won't fix the problem

[janesprando at comcast.net]

I have a G-4 iMac (the one whose base is half a basketball) and am running 
10.3.9. I have an external Firewire drive with a duplicate of the hard drive 
connected to the iMac.

Yesterday my computer was acting erratcially and kind of slow. (I have lots of RAM.) SO I decided to run Disk Permissions.  The Verify Disk permissions reached a certain point and would not go any further. So I tried the force quit (command/option/escape) ---- just got that %&$#@ spinning beachball! So I turned off the iMac with its switch. It was very slow to boot up ----- first the dock......then menu on left side.......then desktop..... then menu stuff on right side...... finally date and clock. Then I tried to just Repair Permissions. It got so far and stalled.  Repeated this procedure about 3 times!

Tried Disk Warrior and it said there was an error and couldn't fix it.
Tried using the Panther install disk to Verify Disk and got this message: Error: the underlying task reported failure  (-9972)

Can anyone tell me what might be wrong and and how to fix it?

jane