Chimera & xMove: Kernel panic. Can't start OSX or read drive

[dspry]

Hello

I was happily using a bug-free Snow Leopard on Asus P5Q-E / Intel Q9550. It was up to date. I tried to upgrade to Lion and received the "Mac OS X 10.7 cannot be installed on this computer", and after a quick search I saw someone mention an install of the latest Chimera and a restart fixed this as it was something to do with a system definition. I installed Chimera 1.4.1 and restarted. Nothing had changed and I had the same error, so I started installing xMove while I was looking for a tutorial. At the end of the xMove installation my computer started reporting clashes with font files and then stopped responding completely, so I reset the computer. I was met with a kernel panic at the Apple bootup screen. I booted into Windows from Chameleon 2 RC5 r59 (where I am now), and with MacDrive 8 my OSX drive is apparently "corrupted and unreadable". It's in My Computer but no data is available.

I am desperately in need of access to this drive. I don't mind going back to Snow Leopard and I don't mind doing a clean install of Lion, but there is data I need to recover from this drive.

Attached is the message I'm receiving (IOPlatformExpert.cpp:1387)

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

 

[dspry]

Update: I booted my Snow Leopard installation disc and ran Verify. It identified a lot of errors. Repair successfully repaired them all but nothing has changed.

Disk Utility did read the drive successfully though, and showed the correct space:data measurements. This situation is kind of so-close-yet-so-far as the data is obviously in tact but I can't access it from any angle.

 

[dspry]

Update: I checked the second partition on the drive ('Boot', where Chameleon is stored) with Verify and it found errors. I repaired them and though OSX won't boot, I can now access the data in Windows.

Sorry if my post here seems impatient, but perhaps this will help if anyone else is as silly as I must be!

I am going to copy my data and do a clean install of Snow Leopard. I have no idea how to install Lion at this stage. I wish I could just do an upgrade installation.