24" iMac Crashes - Reformat?

Question

24" iMac Intel 2.4 GHz occasionally (1-2 times a month) experiences freezes doing normal, mundane things with only Firefox, iTunes. When it happens, I hold down the power button and reboots. The crashes more likely occur when Adobe Flash is running in Firefox and/or when MS Office is running. Recently uninstalled Office because I don't use it.
Please help: Would it help to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the OS? And if so, would using Time Machine to restore the files help to "clean up" the computer since it puts back all the junk files? Thanks!

Answer 1

I'd run Apple Hardware Test first. Given the infrequency, it's unlikely, but this could be the very early signs of a failing HDD.
If it's not a hardware issue, then I don't know that a reinstall would really help. By and large, Mac OS X isn't like Windows, where reinstalling is a magic cure to just about everything. Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD, which can trace it's roots all the way back to the original BSD Unix from like the 1970s I think, and that was modeled on the original Unix which existed for some years before that. So it's a very stable system that has been refined a great deal over the past few decades. It's more the mature middle aged member of the OS family, where Windows is kind of like the awkward kid just entering the downswing of puberty. And Unix is, and always has been, a server OS, where any amount of downtime is considered unacceptable.
You're free to try it if you like, but I'm not so sure you're really going to be happy with the results. Because Flash is going to suck just as much now as it will when you reinstall the OS and everything else.