As for your issue, the best I can do is suggest that a verbose (command-v) boot may tell you something.
Actually I did do that...just forgot to mention it....but couldn't make hide nor hair out of the information.
I assume you meant the Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1
Yup.
....Safari is now reverted to v 5.0.5 and must be upgraded to 5.1.7 for Snow Leopard
Just done and it wants a restart to install. Well, here goes....if I'm not back in an hour, send a search party.
Edit: Send the search party home, I'm back....although it takes 10 minutes to boot.