Kernel Panics on the MacBook Air

My friend has a MacBook Air (Early 2008). It is running Leopard with the latest updates. Every time it is booted up it passes the grey screen and Apple screen, but then goes to an error screen (black and white) that is a kernel log (I think). It says restart your computer, but then when that happens the same thing happens again. I already tried clearing the NVRAM and the PRAM but it didn´t do much. Now, I can hear the startup sound and before I couldn´t. I tried booting into Safe Mode, but it didn´t seem to work. Does anyone have any suggestions that might be able to get me to boot into OS X for me to be able to troubleshoot the issue. On the forums, all of the people who get kernel panics seem to get them while they are booted into OS X. It would be great if someone could help me out by posting some links or instructions. My friend has a lot of important files on the Air and it would be devastating if he lost them. Thank very much for your help and I hope this issue can be solved.

See if you can boot it in Safe Mode:

Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode

I already tried but it didn't work.

Sorry, I missed that in your original post.

It sounds like your operating system is damaged. This may be repairable by running Disk Utility from System Disc 1, but that requires you to boot your machine from that disc. Do you happen to have the MacBook Air SuperDrive? I believe this can be done with the Remote Disc feature, but it looks like it's somewhat complicated.

I think it might help if you run disk utilities from the restore disk. You'll have to hook up the superdrive and restart, once it comes on the first screen you should see the menu bar at the top, clik utilities, then Disk, repair disk, repair permissions. My White MacBook was doing almost the same thing and running repair disk found a few things out of place and repaired them and now I haven't had any problems. "Knock on wood"!!!!!

Good Luck, Rick

Does any USB drive work? I have an old one, but it's not the SuperDrive. Also, could this be fixed by simply buying the $30 Snow Leopard Upgrade? Thanks for your help.

Do you know if you can rent a SuperDrive from anywhere?

As far as I know, any DVD drive will work. I believe you can also use the Remote Disc feature to do it.

Honestly, we don't even know if this is entirely software related at this point, so I can't say how upgrading to Snow Leopard would impact it.