10.4.9 spinning clock on my Macbook - what to do?

Question

I bought a Macbook 2.0GHz yesterday and it seemed to be working fine -- I was able to transfer docs and applications from an older machine -- until I ran Software Update. The updater successfully updated a number of applications (iTunes, etc.) but then hung when it got to the 10.4.9 update. The machine went to a blue screen, and I left it alone for an hour to no effect.
I've tried to reboot and all I get is the spinning clock at the startup screen. I even left it overnight but it remained stuck on this screen. Using the installer DVD I ran Disk Utility and verified the disk and fixed permissions, but the system still doesn't boot up from the hard drive.
I see that a few other people on the net have reported similar problems, but I haven't seen any clear advice about what to do....
George

Answer 1

Target Disk Mode is described here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583
If you have another Mac, you can hook it up with target disk mode and see if the contents are visible.
If you don't have another Mac, but a Firewire external hard drive with an operating system installed (use GUID partitioning for formatting before installing), then you can see if the contents of the internal hard drive are visible.
Either way would get beyond a corrupted boot sector to read data off the machine.
And if neither can, the question of whether or not your data is backed up is important because this could mean that either your directory is damaged (in which case it would be safe if you have a backup to use Alsoft Disk Warrior), or the drive itself was a lemon in which case you'd want Prosoft Data Rescue to attempt to recover the data if you don't have a backup.