Well, I returned the laptop to the university. It turns out the person who had it before me had the same problem of OS X not booting sometimes (with the original disk, not the new SSD we installed when I got it). When I got the laptop, I was in fact told that it "wouldn't start", but we understood that to mean "wouldn't turn on". So when it *did* boot from the OS X live system we supposed that it wasn't in fact completely broken.
Judging from the nature of the problems I would guess the firmware (EFI) is "broken". Perhaps reflashing it would solve the problems, but the laptop is old enough that the university will probably just buy a new one instead, what with the battery being broken and all. So thanks for the help, but the laptop in question is pretty much officially finished. Greetings -- Marc Joliet -- "People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we don't" - Bjarne Stroustrup
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