Unibody MBP hangs after start up (login completes)

[spinnerlys]

Hello.

I have a Unibody MBP (2.53 GHz, 4GB RAM, 250GB 7200rpm HDD, Mac OS 10.5.6), which suddenly hangs after booting into my user (the only one). I can maybe open a Finder window, or even Safari, but after that, the OS hangs, mouse pointer can be moved, but no Spaces, Exposé, Dock, nothing can be clicked, keyboard shortcuts don't work.

A restart brings up the same problem.

It occurred after I manually restarted the machine (after it was acting up again), some System Update completed its install before shutdown.

I reset SMC and am now backing up the data, to maybe do a fresh install or something better.

Does anyone know and maybe has solved this problem?

Thanks in advance.

 

[spinnerlys]

Repairing permissions and the disk via Disk Utility and the Install DVDs didn't work.
Okay, it did, but only for maybe five minutes.

After that the system locked up again.

Now I try to boot into Safe Mode (holding Shift during start-up), but the circle under the Apple was spinning and spinning.

Now I try it again normally (booting).
And it spins and spins. I want my working iBook back (but with the horsepower of my MBP).



PS: will MBP FW800 to FW800 drive and from there via FW800-to-FW400 cable to a MB FW400 port work?

 

[iLog.Genius]

The freezing is most likely due to your update. Many people have performed updates and after it completes, the user may get stuck at the grey Apple screen w/ Spinning gear, hangs at the blue screen (before the login window) and freezing right after the dock/menu bar loads or after a few min. If you're able to backup and then do a reinstall, it should fix the problem, doesn't look like a hardware issue.