The 10.4.9 update hung my computer, and its been hanging other people'sas well. Mine ran and reported an error, then failed to fully restartthe computer - it just sat there on my wallpaper with no finder or menubar for ages. I powered the system down and then up again and it justhung on the gray Apple boot screen with the swirling circle. After 15
minutes I tried again, no love. Disk Repair from the install DVD madesome minor repairs but never solved the problem. In the end I made adisk image of my drive onto an external and did a reinstall, whichseems to have gotten me back on track, all my apps, files, settings,
etc, are all in tact, apart from a couple of stray System Preferenceadd-ons I had, and my Account photo is AWOL. Not bad, all thingsconsidered.
I back up, I've got DVD-Rs with loads of stuffsquirreled away, but clearly a regular disk image routine is also inorder for times like these. Lesson learned... until Time Machine comesalong, anyway!