G5 DP freezes randomly, now won't start

[Don't panic]

I have a DP G5, running 10.3.9, which has been working fine up to about a month ago, when it started randomly freezing (no response whatsoever).
If I had music on it would go on a short stutter loop.
Also, the fans come up in fighter-jet-mode and the only way out was a hard reboot.
until this morning.
i booted it up, it froze mid-morning, and now i can't get it to start at all.
some times i get the startup chime, but not always, but I never get to any 'monitor life'.
No need to mention that I have a ton of essential work file on it.
suggestions?

 

[Multimedia]

Do You Have AppleCare? If Not Is It Less Than A Year So You Can Get It?

Guessing RAM went bad maybe. Do you have AppleCare? Did you unplug it fully from the wall, wait 30 seconds and plug it back in yet? That's how you reset the parameter ram on that model.

 

[Don't panic]

i tried the unplug-replug, but it didn't work.
it chimes, but nothing else happens and after a couple of minutes the fans start accellerating

it's about 3 yrs old and no applecare. until this problem came up, it was basically on 24/7 apart from updates and such.

 

[leekohler]

You need to check the RAM then. I think Multimedia is right. Pull a chip and see what happens. The same thing happened to my old G4. Once I pulled the bad RAM chip, it was fine.

 

[Don't panic]

thanks for the suggestions.
I have 4x 512 so i'll try remove them in pairs.

 

[Don't panic]

taking out the ram didn't help in any of the combinations I tested.
i also left it unplugged for about 30' but nothing happened.

at most now i get to the gray screen with the apple, but usually not even there.

I would try booting from the CD, but I do I open the tray?

 

[leekohler]

taking out the ram didn't help in any of the combinations I tested.
i also left it unplugged for about 30' but nothing happened.

at most now i get to the gray screen with the apple, but usually not even there.

I would try booting from the CD, but I do I open the tray?

Yeah- give it a shot. You can always just restart the computer and quickly press the eject key if it gets stuck. If you can get it started from the disc, run the hardware test.