Intermittent disk locks and screen blanks

I am new (4 months) to Mac. At first, I loved my MacBook Pro, but now it is driving me mad. The disk locks and the screen goes black for a few seconds, then recovers. There is no pattern to it. It happens when I am working actively, and when the machine is sitting alone on a desk playing music. It happens on battery power and mains power. There was a period of about three weeks when it didn't happen at all, but now it is back again. It will happen 5 or 6 times in an hour, and then not again for several hours. Does anyone have any ideas what is causing this?

Peter, as Nick suggested, try repairing permissions. Usually this is what Mac owners do at first sight of an issue. I skipped over the part about you only being a Mac user for 4 months. After installing any new applications, and periodically when I run the Cocktail app, I repair permissions. Sometimes funny things can happen when apps are installed, and certain permissions can get changed. Often it's no biggie, but sometimes something can get changed that shouldn't.
You can repair permissions from within your session, or if you really want to, as Nick suggested, boot from your install disk, and go to Disk Utility. You can repair permissions, and check the drive for any errors as well. This is a good method as the OS isn't actually running, so technically all permissions can be repaired without fear of running applications interfering.
Bryan

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