Mac Mini login not displayed after screensaver

I have a Mac Mini that routinely (several times a week) will not display the login screen after the screensaver has kicked in. The screensaver is running find (e.g. changing which pictures are displayed) but when you move the mouse to stop the screensaver the photo being displayed freezes and the login (list of users) is never displayed. When this happens it is either hold in the power button or do a remote login to use the command line to force a reboot. This problem has existed for many months (multiple Mac OS X updates).
When this happens there are typically two users logged in. One an administrator and one a regular user with a few limitations. Parental Controls are enabled for the second account.
I tried searching the forum and couldn't find a solution mentioned. I apologize if there is one mentioned. Any help would be appreciated. This is a big issue since this is the machine my young kids use and they're not techie enough to reboot without risking corrupting file systems.
Mac Mini 2.26GHz
Mac OS X 10.6.7
Has one External drive connected and always on
Is set to never sleep (it acts as a server)
Is set to reboot on power outages

Okay, this is strange.  I tried restarting three times yesterday with the same results. In fact I left it go overnight only to find the next morning that the bar was still stuck at 30%.  I did a hard boot a little bit ago and waited a few seconds. I restarted an it booted up fine.
Larry

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