[ImpishLM]

Since installing Panther, I've had several system-wide freeze... even the force-quit window won't appear. It seemed to happen while using iTunes 4.1, but that may be coincidental.

I thought perhaps the software for my Intellimouse Explorer was involved, and had an update that I hadn't installed yet, so I installed it.

Upon restarting, now I get to the blue screen, and the startup hangs on this message:

"Waiting for Data Recycler TrashSync daemon"

What is this? How can I get rid of the new mouse installation?

I'm now booted on Jaguar from a firewire drive (thanks to M. Bombich for Carbon Copy Cloner!). Can I restore the mouse software using this disk?

Or... should I reinstall panther?

[diamondsw]

Obviously you've installed some piece of software (probably in the Jaguar days that got carried over) that doesn't work in Panther. Check /Library/StartupItems for it.

[WJMoore]

Try starting up holding Shift to disable any third party kernel extensions (like the Mouse one). If you can boot ok with them disabled then you need to track down which one is causing the problem and disable it.