iTunes will not start and flash will not play after iMac has been idle for 3hours

[petzcw]

Hi all,
I've had a 21.5" iMac since Dec. 2009. Just recently I've found that when the computer has been idle for ~3 hours (i've turned sleep off), iTunes will not start and Flash movies/games will not play in any browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox).

Upon rebooting, everything works great... but after about 3 hours of idle time, it won't work again.

Please help!
Chris

PS- I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling ALL Adobe software, all browsers, and iTunes.

 

[jbuk]

Is is _just_ iTunes and Flash that fail to launch, and can you launch any other programs (from the Dock or from /Applications in the Finder)?

Also, open Utilities>Activity Monitor, set it to show all processes, and check if there are any that are choking your CPU or using up a lot of RAM.

 

[petzcw]

Correct... anything else will open (Office is fine, browsers are fine with anything except flash). Programs that use Adobe Air (like Tweet Deck) also have issues, but i'm guessing that is flash related.

And as you asked, there is nothing unusual in the activity monitor that is hogging the system resources.... can you think of anything else?