Spotty Start-Up.

I''ve been having weird problems with my ibook which is now out of warranty. It freezes often when I try to wake it after sleeping for a few hours and when I manually restart it by holding down the power button it often comes up with the Finder icon swicthing back and forth with a question mark and it often takes twenty or thirty restarts before it comes back, anyone know what's up?

I would make a backup of anything and everything on that machine you want to save. Right now.

You'd be well advised to try steps 6-10 from the troubleshooting list (http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os-x-operating-system/93819-basic-os-x-mac-troubleshooting.html) as well as a PMU reset (Google it.) But make a good backup first. I think there's a good chance that your hard disk and/or logic board may be dying, especially considering the age of your machine.