Kernel Panic PERSISTS :/ after multiple Disk Warrior and Disk Repairs

Question

Hey guys, I need your wisdom!
My OS took a dump on me the other night. Finder froze up and when I restarted, I got this at boot up, (see below, after my whole explaination as to what I've tried).
So, I bought an external drive, partitioned and installed Mavericks OS, along with Disk Warrior.
I ran through everything on DW and it seemed to find issues and repair the problems. Then I ran it through Disk Utility and it all checked out, "ok".
However, when I went to restart with my main OS, it gave the kernel panic error, again.
I'm frustrated, needless to say. I've repeatedly tried to rebuild the drive, repair disk permissions, etc, and every time it seems to "work" but it doesn't.
I am running a data recovery program and it's seeming to find all my files there. But, I really want to just try to resolve this problem to access the drive and do a backup from within.
Please, what are you thoughts on this?
Anonymous UUID:       B45A0F2A-373D-60AE-D2C4-25F99F9AE358
Thu Sep 25 11:18:51 2014
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff801b9ce524): "Process 1 exec of /sbin/launchd failed, errno 8"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-2422.115.4/bsd/kern/kern_exec.c:3836
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff80ada1bdf0 : 0xffffff801b622f79
0xffffff80ada1be70 : 0xffffff801b9ce524
0xffffff80ada1bef0 : 0xffffff801b9ae467
0xffffff80ada1bf10 : 0xffffff801b9e2bc1
0xffffff80ada1bf50 : 0xffffff801b620b3b
0xffffff80ada1bf80 : 0xffffff801b6dca73
0xffffff80ada1bfa0 : 0xffffff801b6f3942
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: init
Mac OS version:
Not yet set
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 13.4.0: Sun Aug 17 19:50:11 PDT 2014; root:xnu-2422.115.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: 9477416E-7BCA-3679-AF97-E1EAAD3DD5A0
Kernel slide:     0x000000001b400000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff801b600000
System model name: MacBook5,1 (Mac-F42D89C8)
System uptime in nanoseconds: 1410682262
last loaded kext at 1149667042: com.apple.driver.AppleUSBTCKeyEventDriver 240.2 (addr 0xffffff7f9d34d000, size 16384)
loaded kexts:
com.rogueamoeba.InstantOn 6.0.1
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBTCKeyEventDriver 240.2
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBTCKeyboard 240.2
com.apple.driver.AppleFileSystemDriver 3.0.1
com.apple.AppleFSCompression.AppleFSCompressionTypeDataless 1.0.0d1
com.apple.AppleFSCompression.AppleFSCompressionTypeLZVN 1.0.0d1
com.apple.AppleFSCompression.AppleFSCompressionTypeZlib 1.0.0d1
com.apple.BootCache 35
com.apple.driver.AppleIRController 325.7
com.apple.iokit.SCSITaskUserClient 3.6.7
com.apple.driver.XsanFilter 404
com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIBlockStorage 2.6.0
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBOHCI 656.4.1
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBHub 683.4.0
com.apple.nvenet 2.0.21
com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort 3.0.5
com.apple.driver.AirPort.Brcm4331 700.20.22
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBEHCI 660.4.0
com.apple.driver.AppleSmartBatteryManager 161.0.0
com.apple.driver.AppleRTC 2.0
com.apple.driver.AppleHPET 1.8
com.apple.driver.AppleACPIButtons 2.0
com.apple.driver.AppleSMBIOS 2.1
com.apple.driver.AppleACPIEC 2.0
com.apple.driver.AppleAPIC 1.7
com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagementClient 217.92.1
com.apple.nke.applicationfirewall 153
com.apple.security.quarantine 3
com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement 217.92.1
com.apple.iokit.IOUSBHIDDriver 660.4.0
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBMergeNub 650.4.0
com.apple.driver.AppleUSBComposite 656.4.1
com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIMultimediaCommandsDevice 3.6.7
com.apple.iokit.IOBDStorageFamily 1.7
com.apple.iokit.IODVDStorageFamily 1.7.1
com.apple.iokit.IOCDStorageFamily 1.7.1
com.apple.iokit.IOAHCISerialATAPI 2.6.1
com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily 3.6.7
com.apple.iokit.IOUSBUserClient 660.4.2
com.apple.driver.NVSMU 2.2.9
com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIFamily 2.6.5
com.apple.iokit.IO80211Family 640.36
com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily 3.2
com.apple.iokit.IOUSBFamily 686.4.1
com.apple.driver.AppleEFINVRAM 2.0
com.apple.driver.AppleEFIRuntime 2.0
com.apple.iokit.IOHIDFamily 2.0.0
com.apple.iokit.IOSMBusFamily 1.1
com.apple.security.sandbox 278.11.1
com.apple.kext.AppleMatch 1.0.0d1
com.apple.security.TMSafetyNet 7
com.apple.driver.AppleKeyStore 2
com.apple.driver.DiskImages 371.1
com.apple.iokit.IOStorageFamily 1.9
com.apple.iokit.IOReportFamily 23
com.apple.driver.AppleFDEKeyStore 28.30
com.apple.driver.AppleACPIPlatform 2.0
com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily 2.9
com.apple.iokit.IOACPIFamily 1.4
com.apple.kec.corecrypto 1.0
com.apple.kec.pthread 1
Model: MacBook5,1, BootROM MB51.007D.B03, 2 processors, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GHz, 4 GB, SMC 1.32f8
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, PCI, 256 MB
Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x859B, 0x435432353636344243313036372E4D313653
Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM1, 2 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x859B, 0x435432353636344243313036372E4D313653
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x8D), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.100.22)
Bluetooth: Version 4.2.7f3 14616, 3 services, 23 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: Wi-Fi, AirPort, en1
Serial ATA Device: ST95005620AS, 500.11 GB
Serial ATA Device: HL-DT-ST DVDRW  GS21N
USB Device: Built-in iSight
USB Device: External USB 3.0
USB Device: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
USB Device: IR Receiver
USB Device: BRCM2046 Hub
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller
Thunderbolt Bus:

Answer 1

gybek wrote:
Um, so what about the TM backup, will it not transfer over the kernel panic errors?
Target Disk Mode requires a second Mac. It puts a "bad" Mac which may have hardware issues and cannot boot properly, in a mode where the internal drive can be mounted on a second Mac as an external Thunderbolt/Firewire drive.
1. Power cycle Kernel-Panic MAC (KP-MAC) in TDM by holding the T key at the chime. If you see a floating FW symbol, then the KP-MAC is in TDM.
2. Use a second Mac (Good-MAC) and  connect the KP-MAC via Thunderbolt/FW cables as appropriate. This may require a TB-to-FW adapter, a FW800-to-FW400 "gender-bender" and an appropriate cable.
3. Once the KP-MAC drive is visible on the G-MAC, you can either create a full disk image backup of the KP-MAC Disk.
4. You can also configure an external drive as a TM target and backup KP-MAC's internal drive via TM with appropriate TM Options.
5. In this case the KP-MAC OS is not in use, just the hardware/firmware which is required to put it in TDM.
This can be useful when your graphics card or display may not work properly, but the CPU/Memory/Disk ar relatively unaffected.
How do I even do a TM backup on that original drive from my temp OS?
As suggested earlier, TM can be used.
Linc suggested using Disk Utility and doing it that way to make a backup and then transferring over everything to a newly installed OS that way.
In TDM, if a TM backup is not possible, for any number of reasons, Disk Utility can create an image of KP-MAC's drive which can be moved to any desired location and files can be extracted as necessary.
Another option is to create an external bootable OS on a USB/FW disk, boot from it, assuming that KP-MAC can be booted and does not have significant HW issues, and create a Disk Image to an external disk destination.
It's almost 15 years of my life on there.
Hence the need for a very good backup/restore strategy.