It's a good thing, then, that you didn't reformat your hard drive. I had a problem with the video card on my Mac Pro overheating; all it needed was to have all the accumulated dust blown out of the fan on the card. It sounds like yours had gone past the point where that would help if you couldn't even start up. Which brings up the point that sometimes a problem is beyond "home" diagnosis.
Clearly, then, your problem wasn't with 10.6.8; your case points out another confusing issue, though, which is when the appearance of a problem is only coincidentally connected to an update or upgrade. Sometimes an upgrade will aggravate a problem that already existed of which we were unaware.
Still, when all is said and done, I don't recommend upgrading to Lion. Apple has had a lot on their plate lately and they seem not to have prioritized fixing the numerous Lion related issues that have been discussed on the blogs. Even the imminent 10.7.2 update will mainly focus on implementing iCloud. How much else they might deal with remains to be seen. It cannot hurt to wait until more is known - and more is resolved.
Last edited by WhiteDog; 10/12/11 06:52 PM.
