Kernal Panics Are Rendering My Mac Unusable....Help

Question

I have a Macbook 2GHz Intel Core Duo and am running 10.5.6. (original Macbook). At about the 10.5.3 upgrade, I started to get lots of kernel panics. I subsequently performed an Archive and Install and that fixed things for about 6 months. After upgrading to 10.5.5, I started to get a dramatic increase in kernel panics. They particularly occur upon booting up, waking up the computer from sleep, and even when shutting down. All of these crashes have taken a toll on many of my files, and I have had to use Disk Warrior to restore the directory several times.
I teach for a living and I give lectures with this computer. Unfortunately, given the state that this computer/OS is in, I really cannot confidently present/teach with this computer for the crashes are too frequent and too unpredictable. I have the latest firmware and have even tried to drag the preferences to the desktop to no avail. I have searched the discussions but it seems as these problems are vary from case to case.
Below is the report from the last crash. Please let me know if any other info is needed. I would appreciate any help as I really cannot afford to buy a new machine at this time.
Thanks very much.
Thu Jan 8 20:39:43 2009
panic(cpu 1 caller 0x001A9C68): Kernel trap at 0x00202f2c, type 14=page fault, registers:
CR0: 0x8001003b, CR2: 0x947427e8, CR3: 0x01089000, CR4: 0x000006e0
EAX: 0xe5080300, EBX: 0x66666667, ECX: 0x4c580100, EDX: 0x00000050
CR2: 0x947427e8, EBP: 0x44c1ff58, ESI: 0x000000c8, EDI: 0x052100a0
EFL: 0x00010a07, EIP: 0x00202f2c, CS: 0x00000004, DS: 0x0000000c
Error code: 0x00000000
Backtrace (CPU 1), Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x44c1fd98 : 0x12b4f3 (0x45b13c 0x44c1fdcc 0x1335e4 0x0)
0x44c1fde8 : 0x1a9c68 (0x464700 0x202f2c 0xe 0x463eb0)
0x44c1fec8 : 0x1a038d (0x44c1fee8 0x206 0x44c1ff28 0x11ddae)
0x44c1fee0 : 0x202f2c (0xe 0x48 0x15000c 0xc)
0x44c1ff58 : 0x1a90fd (0x1 0x44ba048 0x44c1ff78 0x4372e00)
0x44c1ffa8 : 0x126313 (0x0 0x1 0x270000 0x3d00000)
0x44c1ffc8 : 0x1a017c (0x0 0x0 0x1a30b5 0x4a09790)
Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: Safari
Mac OS version:
9G55
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 9.6.0: Mon Nov 24 17:37:00 PST 2008; root:xnu-1228.9.59~1/RELEASE_I386
System model name: MacBook1,1 (Mac-F4208CC8)

Answer 1

Your problem may be hardware related - bad or marginal RAM - or you may have a problem with the hard drive requiring that you reformat the drive and reinstall OS X from scratch rather than doing an Archive and Install. Of course you will need a bootable backup, ideally, or at least a backup of your personal documents and files.
You should also do a hardware test by booting from your original OS X Installer Disc One that came with your computer. After the chime press and hold down the "D" key until the diagnostic screen appears. Run the extended diagnostics repeatedly over at least one or two hours. This will likely reveal a detectable hardware problem and maybe even a bad RAM problem. Report any error messages you receive here.