Mac won't boot after updating to OSX 10.6.4

I am on my 3rd Mac that won't boot after updating to OSX 10.6.4. One MacBook Pro and two iMacs. I fixed one but the last two are getting the better of me. HD is not fried. Have tried every keyboard shortcut on startup, Disk Warrior via. Target Disk, repairing permissions in single user mode. The machines will not boot off of a CD or DVD and it will not boot up in safe mode. Something in the startup files is preventing startup. I am suspecting Sophos antivirus. I tried to uninstall it and trash it but I think it's still blocking something. Any help would be appreciated.

Got it! Not sure if removing Sophos had anything to do with it but here's what I did.
1) boot dead machine in Target Disk Mode (iMac)
2) boot good machine off Snow Leopard disk (MacBook)
3) install OS to dead machine- I found this next part very curious. When the install was complete the MacBook restarted as the iMac.
4) ran software updates
5) shut down MacBook then shut down iMac
6) rebooted iMac- all was good
I actually did this twice because a co-worker had the exact same problem on her MacBook Pro. Got both fixed today.
Thanks everyone for your help!

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