How I revived my MBA after 10.6.3 update: Combo Updater to the rescue!

Hi, just wanted to let everyone know how I managed to revive my MBA when it would no longer boot after a failed update to 10.6.3 using Software Update.
I want to provide as many details as possible, so this will be looooong.
*The problem:* Late in the evening, I got a message from SU that new updates were available. I downloaded the updates to 10.6.3, iTunes 9.1, and three other apps. The machine logged me out, did the install and then suddenly quit with an error message when the whole process was about 95% complete. It immediately rebooted as well but got stuck at the Apple logo and the spinning gear. I could only power it down by holding the power button >4 secs.
*What I tried:* I used a PC to go online and look for help. So I tried: an SMC reset, a PRAM reset, a safe boot (hold Shift key) and a single user boot (hold Command-S). Nothing worked. Slight panic, as the MBA cannot work in target disk mode (no Firewire!) and I had not yet activated Time Machine.
Luckily, I had installed Boot Camp some days ago and a version of Windows. With the new Boot Camp 3.1, Windows can read the Mac HFS filesystem. As it turned out, Windows booted fine and could indeed read and copy my files (with total disregard for any security... nice). So my most important docs were safe.
Still no Mac OS X boot though. Holding Command-V at boot (which allows you to watch the boot process) showed that the machine consistently got stuck after loading AppleCPUPowerManagement (or similar). After doing the SMC reset, it seemed to get stuck a little later, when listing the allowed WiFi channels in my region. However, nothing could get it to boot.
Now I do own an MBA Superdrive so I could boot from the Snow Leopard 10.6.0 DVD. Running Disk Utility showed that nothing was actually wrong with the SSD. It just refused to boot. So I opted to do a 'backup and install' of 10.6.0 from the DVD. It took quite a while, but ran through okay. However, after restarting, the MBA would still not boot. Argh!
*The solution:* Like many Mac users, I did not know that Macs can boot from USB drives. But Intel Macs can! So I went over to my wife's Mac Mini and used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a 1:1 copy of its system drive on a portable HD. I could at least boot my MBA now and backup my personal files in proper Mac format. Right? Eh, no. The boot went well, but under my wife's username I was of locked out of my own home directory. There are probably utilities to circumvent this, but I tried something different first.
I had read on the web that the huge 'Combo Update' files for Mac OS X sometimes do a better job at updating all necessary files. They also allow you to write the update to a different HD than the current boot drive. So... still working off the copied Mac Mini disk, I downloaded the 10.6.3 Combo Updater (>700MB!) and applied it to the MBA's boot disk. It took ages, seemed to get stuck at several points (I really hate not having a drive activity LED) but finished.
Restarted my MBA and presto! Everything fine. Immediately did a full backup and a software update of course. My MBA had gone from 10.6.2 to 10.6.0 to 10.6.3 - Safari, Java and a number of other things needed updates. But it went well.
Hopefully this'll work for some of you too. I'd try booting from a different disk first and running the Combo Update. It will probably solve your problems.

sebuchen1954, sometimes an audio problem can be completely independent of a video problem; for example, when GoToMeeting 4.1 ran on my computer, the video worked fine, but the audio was straight out of +Alvin and the Chipmunks+ when it went through a USB headset. (That problem was fixed in GoToMeeting 4.5.)
Is your partner running the latest Windows version of Skype (4.2.32.155 at this time)?
Since your partner has Windows, perhaps [AIM|http://products.aim.com/windows] (version 7.2.6.1 is currently the most recent version) would be a functional iChat analogue for Windows?

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