17" Powerbook G4 must sit for hours to boot OS 10.4.11
1440x900 Resolution
1.67 GHz Power PC Processor
2x512 MB sticks of RAM = 1 GB total RAM

I have tried several troubleshooting methods including different startup key combinations to reset power management, etc. 

The laptop used to only boot up if it had sat for a longtime. If you turn it off and try to restart it wouldn't chime and it would just be a black screen. 

One of the troubleshooting methods I have tried is booting with just one stick of ram and also swapping the ram into different slots. Ever since I flipped the ram sticks it still has to sit for hours to have a normal boot without just a black screen, but now it chimes every time. 

One of the other things I tried was checking the integrity of the hard drive and it did have an issue,but I just safe mode booted it (shift + power button) and the hard drive now passes the disk utility test. 

I have also done many tests to see if the battery is at fault and its not. 

Please help.
If it chimes, but then takes a long time to boot, you might be able to figure out what it's doing by booting into "verbose mode":


Hit the power button to start it
Immediately hold down Command-V


This will change the boot screen to a text scroll from the kernel putting out messages as it boots. That might show you if it's getting stuck on something.

You might have to do it a few times to be sure. If the disk drive is going south, that might show up as drivers are whatnot having a hard time loading. If it seems to be a different driver each time, or a lot of them, it's probably the drive.