Constant SBBOD with high cpu usage

Question

Hi
since a couple of days ago I constantly get the SBBOD (spinning beach ball of death) on a Mac mini 2011 with Lion 10.7.3.
The system hangs up completely and the only this I can do is click around  and move the windows but the clicks don't do anything and at some point after that everything just stops responding.
At this point I'm forced to do a hard reboot (power switch).
After that the system works for a while and then gets the SBBOD again.
During the SBBOD I can see syslog hogging all my cpu usage in activity monitor, but when I try to kill it or click into activity monitor the programm doesn't respond.
I guessed that something else was spaming syslogd with messages but after the hard reboot I don't see anything in console.
Since then I tried almost everything.
- hardware test, the short and long one -> nothing found
- repairing hard drive and permissions -> didn't help
- S.M.A.R.T says  verified
- PRAM and NVRAM reset
- logged into guest account and started nothing -> SSBOD after ~hour
- started into save mode and left the comp running -> SSBOD after ~hour
- reformated(not zeroed) and reinstalled Lion(not from a backup) -> SSBOD after ~hour
Currently I'm trying to disable syslogd to see if some other process hogs all my cpu load instead of it.
I really hope one of you can help me, this thing is driving me nuts :/

Answer 1

Repairing the permissions of a home folder in Lion is a complicated procedure. I don’t know of a simpler one that always works.
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the page that opens.
Drag or copy – do not type – the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:
chmod -R -N ~
The command will take a noticeable amount of time to run. When a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) appears below what you entered, it’s done. You may see a few error messages about an “invalid argument” while the command is running. You can ignore those. If you get an error message with the words “Permission denied,” enter this:
sudo !!
You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up.
Next, boot from your recovery partition by holding down the key combination command-R at startup. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.
When the recovery desktop appears, select Utilities ▹ Terminal from the menu bar.
In the Terminal window, enter “resetpassword” (without the quotes) and press return. A Reset Password window opens.
Select your boot volume if not already selected.
Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.
Select  ▹ Restart from the menu bar.