Help, My iMac is F'd up
 

So for a couple of weeks now, my iMac is constantly freezing. This happens predominantly when I'm in my workflow for ripping DVD's - Fairmount, Handbrake, Meta X, iTunes. When I repair permissions, it seems to alleviate the problem temporarily, but it ultimately starts happening again. I just re-installed the OS yesterday, but things are still the same. Perhaps I need to do a clean install, but I prefer not to go through the hassle of re-installing everything from scratch. Any help is appreciated.

I'm not really a Mac guy, but if that were a PC I'd start with testing the memory. Freezing at high processor usage would lead me to think memory error first, then bad sectors in the HD.

I feel your pain Kram, but I can't help but chuckle when people with Macs have problems. So much for being indestructible...

OK, now that I got that out of the way, I think tractorcrusher might be onto something about checking for bad memory first. Might be a good time to upgrade?

I'll check the RAM. Although this computer is fairly new and I upgraded the memory at the time of purchase. I already ran a disk check and the HD seems to be fine. I've been through numerous Macs and this is the first time I've had issues.

Mac: Hi, I'm a Mac
PC: and I'm a PC

I can't come up with the next line.

All computers have problems, even Macs. But I will say this, almost every single problem I've had has been fixed by Apple within 1 day. They replaced the screen on my PB (it was my fault... I dropped it), they replaced the entire metal housing on my MBA (likely my fault as well), they've replaced a few broken chargers (definitely my fault).... all at a cost of $0 (excluding the frustration of having to put up with the omniscient, smug geniuses). I likely will never switch back to PCs.

A memory issue would manifest itself across the entire system, not just certain applications. Sounds like you have some weird third party system extension that's borking things.

You'd need to provide some reasonable debugging information in order to figure out what the issue is. Check the console log (Applications -> Utilities ->Console) and see if anything obvious is showing up as a warning or error.

If you're not comfortable with that, take it to your nearest Apple store.

I'm about as anti-Mac as they come, but that's pretty solid reasoning to make the switch right there. The customer service can't be touched by any other PC company out there. Still, I like being "different" by having a PC. Macs are too mainstream now.

what would be obvious?

Memory errors, drive errors, etc. You'd need to have at least a rough understanding of the output in order to diagnose it yourself. If you don't, Apple store.