An intel-based Macbook running the latest version of Leopard will not boot after a safe boot. I held down shift to perform the safe boot. It apparently ran the diagnostics etc, and then came up with Safe Boot in red like it should. I then restarted and now I can't get past the gray Apple screen. It will stay on for a bit with the circular progress bar and then it shuts off. I can mount the disk via firewire mode on my Apple desktop, which is not running Leopard. The disk utility software will not verify the disk. This is my daughter's laptop who is home from college for the weekend and I need to get this fixed pronto. I do not think she has the original install disks with her.

OK usually running "Repair Disk Permissions" and "Repair Disk" from Disk Utilities under Utilities inside the application folder will fix this. Now for the bad news you will need to run it from another Intel Mac on your mac running in Target Mode. Target mode turns a mac into a firewire drive and lets you run diognostic and disk utilities on the whole disk. To enter "Target Mode" hold down the "T" key while booting a blue screen with the firewire symbol will appear on the screen and you can hook your computer to another computer to run the programs. When finished unmount the drive you are working on and shutdown the computer in Target mode by holding down the power button. The computer should start normally afterwords. If not you will need to reload, I hope your daughter is running Time MAchine.