Load of /sbin/launchd failed, errno 2 - CRT iMac

Question

Hi,
I've been working on my parents' iMac, which was booting to Darwin. I followed the instructions in another thread and booted to single user mode, and then did the /sbin/fsck -fy. This produced a massive stream of errors to be corrected - it went for pages and pages. I didn't write it down, because I didn't expect to be locked out, but it was lots of different errors. It seemed to be correcting things, but then it got to something about a directory or header file, and it stalled on the message **Look in the lost-found something something for the missing files**. At this point it died...I gave it some time, and when it was obvious nothing was going on, I hesitantly forced a reboot.
Now in a single-user boot I can't even get to a command prompt. I wrote down some of the last few lines displayed:
BSD root diskOs5, major 14, minor 5
jnl: journal start/end pointers reset (some number strings in here)
Load of /sbin/launchd errno2, trying /sbin/mach_init
Load of /sbin/launchd failed, errno2
And that's where it stops every time. Is it bricked? I'm afraid I don't know what their model is, but I believe there were running the latest Mac OS compatible with a CRT iMac - I recall putting more RAM in the machine so they could upgrade the OS a year ago, maybe.
Many thanks...

Answer 1

Since it's a slot-loader iMac (600 MHz), you can use a feature called FireWire Target Disk Mode.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661
You can then connect the iMac to your other Mac using a FireWIre cable (assuming it also has a FireWire port). Now, the iMac's hard drive will (hopefully) appear as an external FireWire drive on the other Mac's Desktop. If that works, immediately attempt to copy off all the valuable user data on the iMac's hard drive to the other Mac. Then, if the other Mac has sufficient free storage space, you may want to make a disk image of the iMac's hard drive using Disk Utility. After the image file is created and saved to the other Mac, make sure it can be mounted and accessed.
At this point, you should try using Disk Utility on the other Mac to repair the iMac's hard drive. If the other Mac has Leopard, it has a newer version of Disk Utility so it may be able to do the fix.
If that does not work, and you don't have third party utilities such as DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro to try, you should probably erase the iMac's internal drive using Disk Utility. After erasing completes, go to the Restore tab in Disk Utility. Make that disk image file the Source and the newly erased internal drive the Destination. Check the box for +Erase destination+, and click the Restore button.
If that process completes successfully, use +Repair Disk+ again to make sure there are no errors on the iMac's internal drive. Then, unmount the iMac's internal drive and disconnect the iMac from the other Mac, and attempt to start it up normally.
If it does start up and operate normally, great... If not, you may have to start up from the Mac OS X installation disk for 10.4.x and use the installation option for +Archive and Install+. This this give you a fresh system while retaining the user's account and data. Be sure to run Software Update a few times to install all the updates.
Worst case (if +Archive and Install+ does not make the Mac bootable), you will have to use the +Erase and Install+ option and then separately restore the user's data from that disk image.
Please post back if there are any questions about the above, or you don't get passed one of my many "if" statements.