locking up

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I have a late 2009 iMac with a 3.06 GHZ intel core 2 duo processor and 16 GB of RAM. The hard drive is 1 TB, with 629 GB free. Operating system is OS X 10.9.4. I am running dual monitors also.

For the last several months I have been experiencing random lock ups. By that I mean I am working on the computer, and suddenly my mouse will move, but nothing I click on will respond. I can not close programs, minimize, or anything. The only way I have found to get out is to use the power button. This is very annoying when you are working away. I have tried to see if I have the same programs open when this happens, and I can't say that I do. I always have mail open, and I use BusyCal for my calendar, which is always open. Safari is usually open, as is Adobe Acrobat, and sometimes Word, sometimes Excel (Office for Mac 2011).

I took this computer into the Apple store for them to look at, and they couldn't find anything wrong. Of course it did not lock up for them either. I get no error messages when this happens.

I am worried that this might be an impending hard drive failure, although I run the disk utility regularly, and it never finds an issue. The permissions does find a couple of library issues, which it says it repairs.

Suggestions?
 

chscag

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I am worried that this might be an impending hard drive failure, although I run the disk utility regularly, and it never finds an issue. The permissions does find a couple of library issues, which it says it repairs.

Intermittent problems such as this are hard to track down. My first suspicion would also be the hard drive. Unfortunately running Disk Utility is really not a very good way to track down impending hard drive problems. Using a SMART utility would be better, however, if Apple ran their diagnostics on your iMac and didn't find anything, I would assume it passed SMART.

That leaves memory as a possibility. You could try downloading a memory checking program and let it run overnight to see if it flags anything. The memory checking program "rember" is a good one to use.

There's also a possibility that some software or a kext could be at fault. You could try running your iMac for awhile in safe boot mode to see if any lockups occur.
 

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