Being a newbie to this whole process, I'm not very familiar with what to troubleshoot for various issues. I did try the repair disk permissions as suggested. My Dell booted well, but within 2 minutes, it locked up completely. When it does, I can't move the mouse, or type on the keyboard at all. It's very odd. It only does this with 10.6.8.
Also, I actually did download Lion in safe mode. Now my question is what is the best way to proceed trying to update my OS. Should I upgrade/install directly and use xfail? Or should I try to use unifail or myHack? What's the best course to take?