Freeze, freeze, freeze...Has Microsoft taken over Apple?

Question

I've been on the MAC platform for at least 5 years and love it...until the 10.6 update. OSX has always been VERY stable and never a real problem.
Now all I get is random freezing from “<1-min” to over “5-mins”.
Mouse moves, clock sometime stops, sometimes doesn’t. I can't correlate these internet use, TM backup or any other specific tasks.
What I've tryed so far:
- Multiple repair permissions/verify disk
- Reset PRAM
- Turned off ISTATs, Tools, TM, MobileMe
- Reloaded the update using combo download
- Turned off spotlight
Unfortunately I’ve already used Superduper to BU my disk and don’t have a prior 10.6 BU.
Is my only alternative to reload to prior 10.6 and manually reinstall everything? Which may not be a bad idea since it been many years of upgrades on my MBP.
I am gun shy to upgrade my IMACs and MB since I really believe 10.6 upgrade is the problem…all of these issues started with upgrade. The MBP was wonderful until now.
I see lots of Freeze issues in the forum, many being excused away by 'existing" problem. Since everything has been running great up to the day of upgrade, I'd find that excuse a bit hard to swallow.
I'll erase and start all over(back to 10.6.x if possible) if that's my only or best choice. I hoping for better solution and I see Apple releasing a fix any time soon for this pronblem.
Message was edited by: justin_case
Had 10.5 in message body rather then prior 10.6 release...corrected

Answer 1

I am gun shy to upgrade my IMACs and MB since I really believe 10.6 upgrade is the problem…all of these issues started with upgrade.
Thing is, if it were a problem with the upgrade, there would be more people here complaining, and complaining in a more similar way. When there was a real (and very serious) bug in 10.6.0 and 10.6.1, we saw many hundreds of identical reports. Right now, we're seeing only a few dozen reports that aren't particularly similar.
So, to solve your particular problem, you've started well. I assume that there were no problems when you verified the disk, since you didn't mention having to repair. That rules out one possibility that causes frequent problems with updates - writing thousands of files to a damaged disk.
One thing you didn't mention is [starting up in Safe Mode|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455]. Does the problem still happen then? After trying in Safe Mode, reboot normally. If the problem comes back, it's very likely to be some third-party software that is not compatible with 10.6.5.
Another thing to try is to create a new user account and do some testing when logged in to that account. If the problem does not occur in that account, then there's something wrong somewhere with a settings file or something in your usual account. (Of course, then you've got to find the problem, which isn't fun.)
Also, it's possible for hardware issues to only appear after an upgrade, so you should run [Apple Hardware Test|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509] just to make sure there's nothing wrong with the hardware.
If all else fails, try just installing 10.6 right on top of your existing system. This will replace system files without impacting anything else. (Though, make sure your backups are up-to-date, just in case.) Then update everything back to the most recent versions.
If that doesn't work, a clean reinstall is probably your last shot.
Edit: Oh, and you should disconnect all third-party peripherals as well. Sometimes having third-party hardware connected during an update can cause problems.