Mac Won't Start: Invalid Key Length and Non-booting External Hard Drive

I just installed a bunch of software updates and had restarted the machine for them to take effect. On startup, my Mac shows the Apple logo and the spinning circle at the bottom like it's trying to configure the updates and then about a minute in it shuts down.
So I booted into single user mode to try and troubleshoot/repair it and get an "Invalid Key Error" which according to this post - http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8882372&#8882372 - is bad news.
So I'm planning to buy the online version of Disk Warrior, install it on a bootable external hard drive so I can try and repair my main disk. But when I try to boot from that bootable hard drive (USB) my Mac instantly dies. I hold down the OPT key to start up, select the drive, then -zap- black screen and the computer restarts again.
Any ideas what might be going on?
Message was edited by: ryansteawrt
Message was edited by: ryansteawrt

Thanks nerowolfe,
I don't have a DVD on me (I'm on vacation right now) but I do have an image of the DVD on a bootable external hard drive as well as a clean install of Leopard on the hard drive (on a different partition). Any time I try to boot from one of those, the computer looks like it's going to start to boot and then restarts right away.
I've also got my wife's MacBook Pro here. Is there any way I can connect my other machine to hers, mount it as an external hard drive, and run Disk Warrior from her machine?
Thanks again,
=Ryan

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