Clueless: Can not boot into OSX from any media

[Noctivagus]

First of all i moved over to an imac from windows about 2 years ago and have never had any issues, untill now...............

Whenever I boot my Imac i get a 'kernel panic' message (grey screen with 'you need to restart your computer blah blah' in 4 languages). I can not boot from my Mac HD, nor from a bootable superduper backup external HD, nor from my orginal SL or Leopard disk. All go into the kernel panic. I can however boot from my bootcamp Windows Vista partition. Tried booting into safe mode also does not work and gives the kernel panic screeb.

I have run both the standard and extended hardware tests and both have no errors. I booted in single user mode(hurrah that still works)and done a fcsk and unmount and both are without errors. Also done RAM flash.

In single user modei can not find a PanicReporter directory or panic log.

I have no clue what could be wrong here and what is worse no idea how to solve this and get out of this mess. Can not even install a fresh SL copy as my DVD wont boot either.

Any of you gurus have any ideas what this could be and can help my on my way again troubleshooting this ?

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[Noctivagus]

Shameless bump as I am still desperate.

Is there really noone that has any ideas where this problem might lie or can give me a new road to troubleshoot ?

 

[lannister80]

Wow, that's a noggin-scratcher.

I was tempted to say it might be some crazy kext that was killing your machine on boot, but if you can't even boot from the DVD...

Are you *sure* that the machine is actually booting from the DVD? Not just spinning the disc and then booting into the OS installed on your hard drive?

Sounds crazy, but pull the boot drive out of your machine and try to boot with the DVD. Just to guarantee the DVD is actually doing the boot.

 

[Noctivagus]

Feels good to know that i am not the only one being at a loss here.

I have nearly come to the conclusion that it must be a hardware issue.

I have logged into windows (that still worked) deleted the MAc partition and then restarted and tried to boot from DVD. Didn't work.

I bought a firewire cable and tried to boot the HD from my other mac via target disk mode and tried to boot the DVD in my other MAC. Didn't work.

Now i am wiping the HD via target disk mode to start completely fresh and will try a DVD install once that finishes but I have a feeling that will not work either.