Griffin iMate X startup crash/corruption; a follow-up

Today we have more on the Griffin iMate startup crash which we first reported over the weekend (the previous coverage is reposted below). Here is the latest:

More on fixing the problem From Griffin: "Our installer changes the permissions and owners for "/", "/Library","/System" and "/System/Library." Although fixing the permissions in "/" (as the Apple KB #106464 shows) helps in some cases, all of the other directories also need to be set back to the correct settings for a complete fix. The unistaller on the fix-it Web page does exactly that. If just fixing "/" doesn't help users to boot correctly into OS X, then step 2 explains how to set the permissions on all the affected directories. Users still have to run the uninstaller to remove the iMate driver files and set the directories to the correct owners. Therefore, it is important users who have installed the driver run the uninstaller after they can log back in."

Also from Griffin: "We have narrowed this down to a bug in a recently released version of the Apple software installer. Apple has been notified and should address this very soon. The problem stems from the Apple installer changing boot drive permissions and should not cause a loss of data."

Reader report: driver may not be needed Daniel Leighton writes: "As you have noted, Griffen explains how to get rid of the blue screen problem following installation of the iMate driver. In my experience, however, the blue screen problem can re-appear at any time. Once I performed the blue screen fix, the OS X splash screen no longer reported what was being activated during the startup process. In an attempt to fix this, I set my Login preferences so that I no longer logged in automatically during startup. However, this attempted fix resulted in a grey screen at startup. I finally threw in the towel and spent a day re-installing OS X from scratch. All is working well again after a reinstall of X and lots of Retrospect backups. However, it now appears that I no longer even need the driver. My extended keyboard works fine without it when used with the iMate alone, and I have QXpress running on a machine dedicated to OS 9, which works fine with the original OS 9 iMate driver."