24" iMac going down the crapper

[Aldyn]

i have had my 24" iMac since september, and have loveeeeeeeed it dearly, except the past few months, i've been experiencing numerous problems.

the most frequent is, at the user-login screen (anytime i leave my room, i switch it to the login screen) when i click on my name, often i'll get the spinning beach ball and it'll just stick like that forever (pretty much until i hard-restart the computer)

also, sometimes when just doing normal computing an application will freeze and get the spinning ball. if i let it go, it just spins (i've let it go for hours and come back to the same thing) and if i try clicking on another application, the spinning ball just spreads to everything i switch to. forcing me to hard-restart again.

has anyone else experienced these problems? it's driving me crazy. and i really don't like doing all these hard-restarts.

 

[janey]

have you reinstalled yet?

 

[Aldyn]

have you reinstalled yet?

nope, i was going to do that as a last resort (or if i ever got the harddrive so filled up with junk that it was causing slowing, but at the moment i have plenty of space)

 

[bartelby]

How much is "Plenty of space"?
What's the S.M.A.R.T. Status of the hard drive?

 

[maverick808]

First thing I would do is run Repair Disk in Disk Utility. Since you can't run a full Repair Disk from inside your current install you will have to put in the OS X install CD and boot off that (hold down C while starting). When you get into the GUI go to the Utilities menu and run Disk Utility. Do the repair and I bet you have some disk problems it fixes.

However, it may be that the lock-ups are a sign of impending disk failure. If this is the case you'll have to get a new hard-drive at some point.

By the way, if you haven't already then make sure you back up all your data right now!

 

[Penryn]

I would just do a clean reinstall. Use SuperDuper to make a copy of your HD so that you have all your files and then an Erase and Install.

Penryn

 

[colorspace]

SMART Status

In case you aren't familiar you can check the SMART status of your hard drive from the "Disk Utility" application. I would also recommend you start there and do a disk check if the SMART Status is OK. Either way a complete back up is probably in order before doing anything else.

 

[4God]

Wonder how the OP's situation is. Fixed?