Beachballs, freezes...

Why do I keep on having strange problems with my Mac? Sometimes when I (or my wife) tries to log in to the machine, after entering my password, the machine just seems to think for about 10-15 seconds, and then it logs in. Or when I log out, the machine just sits there for about 10-15 seconds until it logs out. Sometimes it doesn't log out, but the menubar and dock does disappear, forcing me to do a hard-shutdown. Well, it doesn't do those two things all the time, but often enough to be annoying. Sometimes Safari beachballs, sometimes my wife can't quit Mail...

What could be causing all these issues? No, I'm not really looking forward to reinstall OS X.

HLdan said:

Have you tried resetting the PRAM? Also you may want to do "Repair Disk", you have to use the Mac OS X install disc and do Repair Disk from Disk Utility.

Click to expand...

I have at least fixed permissions, but that didn't help. I resetted PRAM to fix the issue of "waves" going across the screen, but that didn't help with the OS X acting up.

I'll take a look at repairing the disk. Thanks for the suggestion