10.5.6 update crash followed by kernel panics

Question

I ran the update, but it crashed midway through complaining about the media it was being run from, tried a restart, but kernel panics, tried single user mode, but get multiple "Package 0 didn't get an HPET", to fail at the end in "No HPETs available...CPU(s) configured incorrectly" followed by panic and some stack trace dump (included at end), tried resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) and the PRAM, all to no avail, ran the extended hardware test with no errors, but I am able to boot up into the emergency boot partition created by Tech Tool Pro.
Apart from reformatting my hard drive is there any way to recover my Mac, please!
Tue Dec 16 00:57:17 2008
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x2E60CC93): "No HPETs available...CPU(s) configured incorrectly\n"@/SourceCache/AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement/AppleIntelCPUPowerMana gement-39.2/pmThread.c:100
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)
0x2e637f18 : 0x12b0fa (0x459234 0x2e637f4c 0x133243 0x0)
0x2e637f68 : 0x2e60cc93 (0x2e60f9d8 0x0 0xbbdb338c 0x4)
0x2e637fc8 : 0x19eccc (0x0 0x0 0x1a20b5 0x3a702e8)
Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement(59.0.1)@0x2e606000->0x2e61ffff
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task
Mac OS version:
9G55
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 9.5.0: Wed Sep 3 11:29:43 PDT 2008; root:xnu-1228.7.58~1/RELEASE_I386
System model name: MacBookPro1,2 (Mac-F42DBEC8)

Answer 1

It looks like "HPET" is the culprit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HighPrecision_EventTimer
Have you tried starting your mac up from your Leopard disk that came with the machine and if so, can you run disk permissions from there (on the startup drive you wish to recover)?
NB: some reckon it's not desirable to run disk permissions from the disk but I have done it in the past and it got me started at least, repairing disk permissions AGAIN from the startup drive, (as the system was up and running)
NB2: If you can start up, you could run the combo updater: http://support.apple.com/downloads/MacOS_X_10_5_6_ComboUpdate
Message was edited by: Alexandre