Hmm...Directory Services is what starts NetInfo and lookupd. It sounds like you may have a config problem.
Can you go to the terminal and type
nidump -r / / and send me the text you get back from that? It spouts out your entire NetInfo domain. You can edit it to delete the user stuff from it - this will dump all your users, and while the passwords are encrypted, you probably don't want to send that part out.
Ya can either post it here, or PM me, or send it to me in an
email. I'll take a look and see if I can figure out what may be going wrong.