[WUNHjazz]

so a couple of days ago, my powerbook started throwing fits, kernel panics after about 10 minutes of being up. so i removed all my USB and firewire devices. Still having problems. So i created a new account. Same problem. Next step, I removed my kingmax 1GB stick of ram. Hooray, problem solved, right? Sweet. But now OS X is painfully slow. Well, I've got that 256MB stick from apple, I'll put that in. Woah, kernel panic again, this time right at researt. D'oh! So I pull that out and restart the machine. Now, i get the chime, and then a grey screen with an OS9-esque folder with a question mark. So I've booted from my 10.4 install dvd, harddrive is wiped clean.

Questions:
How did my harddrive get cleaned?
Is this perhaps a board issue, not a bad ram issue?
I have a clone of my HD from about a week ago on an external firewire, is trying to boot from that going to put that information at risk of being wiped too?

Help me oh wise members of the macnn forums...

[CanadaRAM]

It's unlikely your HD has been erased, but more likely that the catalogs have been damaged in your crashing. A tool like DiskWarrior may be able to get it back in shape BUT don't try it on your existing machine -- you may have logic board issues that will just crash againg. Do your recovery on a friend's machine. Meanwhile get your machine to an Apple Services place for a diagnosis - I'm guessing it's beyond a home repair situation.