Back home, in front of my Mac, and with my reference book.
As the Mac passed POST, there is not an obvious Hardware Error.
However if it is suffering an intermittent issue, this might fail if there is an error.
My MBP was not consistent with this when had a defective Logic Board, and even I isolated the issue to one of the RAM module, the logic board was damaged (may be by the defective RAM).
In general the Mac OS X start up is as follows: (Leopard reference):
Firmware Stage: Successfully ok is you hear the chime sound, the power or light lit and light gray screen (POST OK = Power On Self Test passed OK)
Booter Stage: is you see a dark gray Apple Logo it is OK. The system kernel and essential kernel extensions loaded OK
Kernel Stage: you see the dark grey spinning gear below the Apple logo, the BSD UNIX system loaded.
User environment Stage: the first process launchd starts, this is indicated by the blue screen and will successfully end with the login screen or the Finder.
Can you please recap your issue based on the previous stages, where you get stuck?
(1) Can you start up Mac OS X in Safe Mode? Do this by holding the shift key during startup.
If this works, then launch the Console (this will give you a lot of details about what the system is doing).
To launch it use spotlight and type 'Console', or find it inside the Applications Folder, Utilities
Launch Disk Utility and check the HDD.
Restart and see if it works.
(2) Can you start in Single User Mode?
Holding Command and S keys.
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No need to worry about data recovery from the internal HD, like I said, I've got an external witih Time Machine.
As for booting from the Install DVD, I've tried numerous times, but each time I do, I can hear the DVD drive spinning up and the read head accessing. It does take longer than the HD boot, but the end result is still always the same; grey curtain decends and I get the multi-lingual kernel panic message, "Need to restart your mac".
Is there a way to boot from DVD and see what's going on like I did in verbose, and visual safe mode?
How do I boot from another OS wihtout having an exteranl drive with another OS installed? Unfortunatley, I don't have any compatible OS's lying around in a spare external.
Not sure if this will work, one way is after downloading a free Ubuntu Disc Image and burn it to a disc, when starting up the Mac boot form the disc holding the C key.
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Some basic Commands will be:
/sbin/fsck -fy
This will verify and repair the startup volume (like Disk Utility will do)
/sbin/mount -uw will mount the startup volume as a read a write file system
These two are listed/shown in the screen.
After doing this try rebooting by the command
/exit
