Won't boot as firewire drive?

Hey guys,
So I've read through every post on a ton of websites about this problem and nothing I tried worked. Today I started my computer up as an external firewire drive (holding 't' as it was booting) and it worked normal. However, several hours later I tried it on another computer and for some reason it didn't show up on the other computer. I restarted it and tried it again - no luck. I disconnected the cables and then just booted up like normal and all of a sudden my Macbook Pro took like 1 min longer to boot up than normal (1 min 52 sec). Also, my computer wouldn't shut down - it got stuck on my bg after clearing the finder.
I proceeded to follow all of the advice I found online: I reset the PRAM and SMC (taking out the battery, disconnecting the power cord, holding power button for 7 s, reconnecting everything), deleted the cache in my home/library/cache, and even repaired the disk and disk permission via the install disk (also repairing disk permission after booting up to see if that would do anything). Somewhere along the way my computer decided that it could now shut down normally (well - it turns off within like 5 - 7 seconds but if I close the lid the little sleep light remains on for another 10...is that normal?) - but I still have the two problems: slow startup and not showing up as an external firewire drive on another computer.
Anyone have any ideas - or do I totally have to reinstall Mac OS X?

So tried the previous post and it didn't work. I got fed up so I did an archive install of Leopard using the install disc and the problem STILL won't go away...what else can I possibly do? I thought that was the last resort? Thanks...

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    So, all of that said, I guess my first question is what the **** is going on? The drive mechanically is functioning fine, but there seems to be an issue with its readability (and the directory/files?).
    What's more, why won't this laptop mount ANY drive? I should be able to Option-boot into any drive, especially if the USB ports, drives, and OS's are all fully functional, right? Is there any workaround I'm missing? Even if the internal drive and data are just screwed, what's causing a total lack of mounting or booting of any drive, internal or external?

    Holy crap, I got it to work.
    Essentially, I just waited until DiskWarrior reached Step 9 and told it to skip the step before it had a chance to freeze. It skipped successfully, moved on, rebuilt and replaced the faulty directory files.
    So far the computer is booting like normal, I can log in, and I'm currently copying all of the data to an external as I type this.
    I still have no idea why the computer wouldn't mount or boot to any drive, but I guess I'll deal with that later.

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