Intermittent freezes upon cold boot

Question

Greetings gurus,
I've been experiencing intermittent freezes on cold boot since a few weeks. I did not have them on 10.5.4. I've only had 4 freezes and according to the CrashReporter log all are identical, as far as I can tell. I have not installed any new hardware and I have only one external thing connected and that's a Sennheiser USB headset. I'm unable to tell if all leave identical messages in other logs however.
The *CrashReporter log* for the four occasions says that the process which broke is *coreservicesd [43]*. On each occasion, it is said that "Thread 0" crashed. This is how the beginning of that log reads (from the crash earlier today):
*Process: coreservicesd [43]*
*Path: /System/Library/CoreServices/coreservicesd*
*Identifier: coreservicesd*
*Version: ??? (???)*
*Code Type: X86 (Native)*
*Parent Process: launchd [1]*
*Date/Time: 2009-01-19 20:33:26.618 +0100*
*OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.5 (9F33)*
*Report Version: 6*
*Exception Type: EXCBADACCESS (SIGBUS)*
*Exception Codes: KERNPROTECTIONFAILURE at 0x0000000000000000*
*Crashed Thread: 0*
The symptoms are:
+ *Menu bar* is invisible (can make out language flag, airport and bluetooth icons and bottom of menu bar).
+ Finder is unresponsive (can't open folders on the desktop and their icons are gone but not their names - relaunching the Finder does not help).
+ Applications won't launch from the Dock.
+ I can access the Restart, Sleep, Shutdown dialog box by pressing the off button on my ACD, but the Shutdown button doesn't work.
+ Holding the power button will not always force shutdown, but seems to put the computer in some sort of sleep mode (when pressing the button again the desktop will appear "greyed" out and a white progress bar will display).
As it doesn't happen upon every cold boot I haven't been able to use the Verbose mode. I have done the following:
+ Trashed the plists of Finder and Dock
+ Fixed permissions in DU
+ Left it unplugged from the mains for a whole day
+ Reset PRAM/NVRAM
+ Using Onyx, deleted the caches under Cleaning - System and Cleaning - User (radical perhaps?)
+ Turned off all login items (AppTrap, Gmail Notifr, Fuzzy Clock, Skype)
+ Run Apple Hardware Test, normal and extended, with no errors found
+ Verified boot disk in DU while booted from the installation disk: no errors
I tried a Safe Boot but it froze. However, it does not freeze every time.
When it froze this evening, I found loads of the following message in Console-All Messages:
*WindowServer[51] LaunchServices/5123589: coreservicesd is running an unsupported version, 0 ( we are 10500000 ), so we cannot talk to it.*
Many of them are prefaced by loginwindow[23] instead of WindowsServer.
Below are the messages in Console-Console messages from the latest time that it froze (all of the messages). There's some talk about com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua which I don't understand.
When it says that a "thread" crashes, could it be hardware-related (i.e. the processors)? But should not AHT have caught that? Or is it some corruption in the system? I have backups and clones so I'm not worried about losing data. I'm more concerned about the hardware.
Any thoughts and ideas would be helpful.
/p
19-01-2009 8:33:10 PM com.apple.launchctl.System[2] launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd: /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plist
19-01-2009 8:33:10 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.cups.cupsd) Unknown key: SHAuthorizationRight
19-01-2009 8:33:10 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (org.ntp.ntpd) Unknown key: SHAuthorizationRight
19-01-2009 8:33:26 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.UserEventAgent-LoginWindow[100]) Exited: Terminated
19-01-2009 8:33:27 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd[43]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
19-01-2009 8:33:28 PM SystemUIServer[120] Normally SSMenuExtra would not have been loaded as a Menu Extra.
19-01-2009 8:33:31 PM [0x0-0x2002].com.apple.iCal.helper[129] _RegisterApplication(), FAILED TO REGISTER PROCESS WITH CPS/CoreGraphics in WindowServer, err=-50
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] <CFArray 0x134a30 [
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] 0xa06981a0]>{type = mutable-small, count = 3, val
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] ues = (
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] 0 : <CFString 0x1349a0 [0xa069
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] 81a0]>{contents = "/System/Library/CoreServ
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] ices/Menu Extras/TextInput.menu"}
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] 1 : <CF
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] String 0x1349f0 [0xa06981a0]>{contents = "/
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extra
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] s/Volume.menu"}
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] 2 : <CFString 0x138910
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] [0xa06981a0]>{contents = "/System/Library/Cor
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] eServices/Menu Extras/Clock.menu"}
19-01-2009 8:33:33 PM com.apple.UserEventAgent-Aqua[114] )}
19-01-2009 8:33:37 PM org.ntp.ntpd[14] Error : nodename nor servname provided, or not known

Answer 1

Actually, doing the following would probably fix everything; at least it has fixed every issue I have ever had.
If Disk Utility can't fix it, you'll need a more robust utility for the repair. I would recommend DiskWarrior. It is the best at directory repairs. It rebuilds then actually replaces your old directory. I feel every Mac owner should have a copy. Make sure you get the disk so you can boot up on it to run repairs. You can also install it on another drive and run it from there to repair this one. DW works faster that way.
I use DW once a month to try and catch errors in my system from getting too far out of hand.
If you have a good backup, hopefully a clone of your system before you had issues, an Erase and Install may also rid you of this issue. But, beware! You will lose everything on the drive with this procedure. Let us know if you need help with that!
 Luck! DALE
p.s. by Thomas Bryant '''' from a previous post.
Diskwarrior is a "must have" utility and it's corrected any weird problem I've ever encountered. Anytime I have to do a forced shutdown etc. I run DW to get the directories back in tip top shape. Directory problems cause strange issues and often over the course of several weeks or months the little problems add up to finally a major problem. Tom