Jerry and Brian, Thanks for your suggestions. Unfortunately I didn't get your responses until this morning and had already reinstalled the system. (I subscribe to the digest version which doesn't come through here until late in the afternoon, usually after I'm gone for the day.) I'm not sure what the initial problem was that caused the kernel panic, but on Monday I tried to do an archive and install of the OS to see if that would help, the computer crashed during the install, which I found out yesterday, left me with no operating system on the machine. Which explains why I was getting the square with the globe. I was able to boot from the Install CD and set the startup disk to my external drive, but was unable to backup the user's data, which was now my main concern. (I have cloned images for most of our machines so a reinstall usually isn't a big deal if I have the users folder backed up.) I booted from my external drive, but during the install the users folder had been moved to the Previous Systems folder. I tried to copy this folder to my external drive, but it would crash every time. I tried both a manual copy and using Carbon Copy Cloner. I needed to get the machine back up so I broke the bad news to my co-worker and just did a total reinstall. The computer seems to be working ok at this point. I suspect had I backed up her files prior to doing the archive and install, I probably could have save them. I've done archive and install many times and never had a problem. I thought it left the users folder alone when it did this, but apparently it does do something to it. It only takes once to get burned though and so I've learned my lesson. BACKUP FIRST!!!
(Just for the record, the computer was on a UPS with surge protection, but it was in an area of our building that was not on backup generators and which did not regain power until sometime Monday afternoon.) Anyway, just wanted to get on here and thank you both for your help. Beth | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be April 25 at Pitt Academy, 6010 Preston Highway. | The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
