This always happens with crashes/freezes

[dotdotdot]

2 year old iMac. No gaming.

I get a crash / freeze where the computer is always completely unresponsive (even the power button doesn't work). I have to unplug it from the wall and then restart it. This happens maybe once a month, or twice a day. Problems started right away from ownership but hasn't increased in frequency much. At the 1 year mark I had to do a reformat because it would not reboot. I've had a handful of kernel panics, but none lately. (No Apple Care.)

There are two common themes to these episodes.

1) Almost always, but not quite, I am watching a video clip (yes...even happens on a mainstream site, such as Yahoo!).

2) Out of the speakers (auxiliary) there is a repetitive clicking sound, which always happens.

Can anything be deduced from the connection between points 1 and 2?

 

[dotdotdot]

My Flash player was out of date, so I downloaded the update. Maybe that was the problem.

 

[chscag]

intermittent problems are always difficult to track down. From the sound of it, I would say your hard drive was|is acting up. I had the same iMac as you and wound up having to replace the hard drive. Fortunately I purchased Apple Care and Apple replaced the drive for free. The only thing I can suggest to you is to check the hard drive using Disk Utility to verify and repair and then download a SMART program to further check the drive.

 

[dotdotdot]

Yes, one of my biggest mistakes was not buying Apple Care!

Oddly, my Yahoo! news pages seems to be loading properly now. Probably means nothing, but I'll take a victory where I can.