Bum, my once flawless hackintosh is dead. I ran the modified 10.5.5 installer, yes i agree, i should have updated in steps,( i tried searching for 10.5.3 amd update but dispite saying the update works for AMD and Intel, the description tells it is only for Intel. Hmm. I'll get there in the end). after installing, the kernel panicked - this may have even occurred during the installation, i never saw it finish. This was the first time that kernel had had problems so it must have been something the installer was doing. Rebooted and it freezes during boot.
At least I've learned that in my next installation of leo i'll create a test partition. Thanks anyway