After restoring, computer won't start up.

Okay, here's what I've done.
I inserted the Snow Leopard (in my case USB) and started up my computer from that. Under Utilities, I hit Restore from backup, chose my backup, restored fine. After 45 minutes, it says it's done and asks me to restart the computer. When I do, I get a dark gray screen (with a power symbol in the background) that says I need to restart my computer. I restarted it and I got the same screen. It's an endless cycle! I thought it may have restored incorrectly, so I tried to restore it again; same issue. I thought maybe the backup file was corrupt, so I tried an older backup; same issue.
Any ideas? Right now my computer is inoperable unless I start it up from the Snow Leopard USB (I don't have a disk copy). Thanks guys!

evarivers wrote:
Okay, here's what I've done.
I inserted the Snow Leopard (in my case USB)
What is that? Do you mean you have a copy of your Install disc on a USB drive? If so, are you sure it's a +Snow Leopard+ disc? A Leopard disc cannot restore a Snow Leopard backup properly.
I get a dark gray screen (with a power symbol in the background) that says I need to restart my computer.
That's a +*kernel panic.+* They're usually caused by hardware problems, but can also be caused by software, including using a Leopard Install disc to restore a Snow Leopard backup.
Why are you restoring? If you were having problems, such as problems with your internal HD or disk corruption problems, it's possible that parts of your installation of OSX were damaged, and Time Machine backed the corruption up, and it's now causing the kernel panics. If that's a possibility, try the restore again, but select an earlier backup, from before the problems started.
If that won't work, you can boot from the Installer, erase your internal HD, and install OSX on it. When your Mac starts up again, use +Setup Assistant+ to transfer your apps, users, data, etc. from your backups. See #19 in [Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/FAQ.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum), for detailed instructions.
Then download and install the 10.6.4 "combo" update. That's the cleverly-named combination of all the updates to Snow Leopard since it was first released, so installing it should fix anything that's gone wrong since then, such as with one of the normal "point" updates. Info and download available at: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1048 Be sure to do a +Repair Permissions+ via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder) afterwards.

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