Crazy Frustrating Freezing Issue

[LaneScott]

Hey. Running Mavericks (10.9.5) on MBP (13" late 2011). 16G of RAM.

Things seem to have stabilized, but I spent the entire day with my computer freezing any time I tried to save or print anything written in MS Word or TextEdit. I could use the programs to write something, but any attempt to save (to anywhere) or print (to anywhere) led to spinning death. I also could not print from Preview. Same result. Safari was useable to surf, but could not print from it, either. Always spinning death and force quit. The result was the same whether the computer was plugged into the printer in my office or if I unplugged that and tried to print via wifi to a different printer.

Disk Utility and Onyx both said that everything was fine, permissions fine, verified, etc. Ran hardware check and that was fine. Etc, etc. In the process of doing all this the computer was restarted about ten times (including into recovery mode), and all of a sudden it seems to be functioning again. I can save, print, etc.

Any idea what was going on or how to prevent it happening again (or how to troubleshoot it if it does)? Thanks.

 

[satcomer]

First download thew free program EtreCheck and run it. If it shows something in red that means it is incompatible so manually delete it or update it, then reboot.

Also use something like MacUpdate Desktop and use the Mac App Store to make sure it updates everything also.

Then open /Applications/Utilities/Console.app just after a freeze and see what it says what the error was. This will help it tracking down the problem.