My Mac Mini Keeps Freezing!

Question

Hello,
Hoping someone can help me.  My MAC Mini (mid-2011) was working great for 7 months.  I decided I wanted to take advantage of Facetime so I purchased a Logitech C920 webcam. When I connected it to the USB port, my MAC screen froze and then turned white.  Upon rebooting the MAC, a camera driver update window appeared from Apple requesting I download two camera drivers (unfortunately I don't remember the name of the files). I downloaded and installed the files then the webcam seemed to work, no problem.  After a day or two my MAC started freezing, and the screen would turn white.  I have to turn off the MAC using the power button, and then turn it back on.  I have since disconnected the webcam but the issue still exists. I tried using time machine to restore an old image prior to updating the driver, but that did not help.  I ran a Sophos virus scan on all the files but the results were clean. I made sure all my MAC software is up to date and it was. Not sure what to do next. Maybe format the boot drive and then restore the old image?  Wait for Mountain Lion to come out and see if that takes care of it? If I format the boot drive won't the MAC become inoperable and I won't be able to restore the old image? (sorry, I'm an advanced PC user but this is my first MAC).  Thanks.

Answer 1

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
If you have an optical drive, make sure there is no disc in it.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ If you’re running OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the page that opens.
Step 1
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Enter "BOOT_TIME" (without the quotes) in the search box. Note the timestamps of those log messages, which refer to the times when the system was booted. Now clear the search box and scroll back in the log to the last boot time when you had the problem. Post the messages logged during the time something abnormal was happening. That time might be before or after the boot.
For example, if the problem is a slow startup taking three minutes, post the messages timestamped within three minutes after the boot time, not before. If the problem is a system crash or shutdown failure, post the messages from before the boot time, when the system was about to crash or was failing to shut down. In either case, please include the BOOT_TIME message at the beginning or the end of the log extract.
Post the log text, please, not a screenshot. If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Edit it out by search-and-replace in a text editor before posting.
Step 2
Still in Console, look under System Diagnostic Reports for crash or panic logs, and post the most recent one, if any. In the interest of privacy, I suggest you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if present (it may not be.) Please don’t post shutdownStall or hang logs — they're very long and not helpful.