Frequent freezes since update to 10.6.8

Question

Hi all,
Thanks for you help in advance
I updated to 10.6.8 and first had a problem with the dock using 100% CPU, I worked around this using the fix provided here http://bit.ly/mPCVii
The thing is, I have nother problem now, every once and a while (20 minutes, 40 minutes, etc ...) one app hangs, so I switch to a new app or go to the dock or try to force quit it and the whole computer freezes for 20-30 seconds and then eveyrthing comes back to normal.
This happens whether I've got 1 or 10 apps launched and it also happens whether I'm on a simple app like TextEdit, Chrome or Safari or more powerful ones like Parallels, Photoshop, etc ... which makes me beleive that this isn't an app oriented issue.
Also, after the update to 10.6.8 and after the Airport Update, I had to repair permissions for these, they all got repaired using disk utility except for one which is the remote desktop agent (ARDagent), myabe this is linked sonce there was a security issue in Leopard 2 years ago with this.
I've also tried resetting PRAM and rebooting in Safe Mode.
Thanks for your help gents.
Kind Regards,
Arnaud
MacBook Pro 2011 15'
2 GHz Intel Core i7
8Gb RAM
512Gb crucial SSD

Answer 1

Arnaud,
     I am also experiencing the frequent freezes and the 100% CPU usage since the upgrade. I looked online and fixed the CPU usage with the fix mentioned in the thread but still have the freezes.
     I just verified my permissions and i had a bunch issues. I repaired them and now they're reporting ok. I'm going to try resetting SMC and I hope that takes care of it.
     I read your comment about the SATA II drives and i wanted to let you know i don't think it's that. I had two SATA 2 drives in my macbook and upgraded to 2 SATA 3 drives two days ago. I thought the freezes were related to one of my drives but now i not sure. I don't remember having any problems with my old SSDs but then again i can't remember if i upgraded to 10.6.8 when i had those in my system. I guess what i'm saying is that it appears the problem occurs regardless of if you have SATA 2 or SATA 3 SSDs in the system.
     Something that i found odd was some of my xbench scores. Before i fixed the CPU problem i received about a 600 for my SSDs. Right after i fixed it went down to about 440. I did the permission fix and it went back up to 500 then right back down to 440s. I don't know if that has anything to do with the upgrade but it's definitely odd...
     I'm half tempted to reinstall OSX not upgrade to 10.6.8. I could see that stops the freezes stop and if the Xbench results go back to the 600s....  If not, Lions only a week away. Maybe that will fix everything. Hopefully someone has some suggestions. If i decide to reinstall ill post my findings.