System freezes after update to 10.8.1

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1. Open Disk Utility and repair permissions

2. Open Finder and delete the content of:

/Library/Caches

~/Library/Caches

3. Press Shift key in boot and check if it appears

What exactly happens when it freezes, and how do you recover?

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.

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.

☞ 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 hang or shutdown failure, post the messages from before the boot time, when the system was hanging 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, spin, or hang logs — they're very long and not helpful.

I am having the same problem. I have a 27" iMac, Mid 2010. Exactly the same thing though. I will try the permissions thing now from mende1. letsgettogether, did you get it fixed yet?

I am having the same problem.

@letsgettogether: Yeah. I updated and that was all that I changed that I can think of. And it has been freezing up about 10 times a day, requiring me to turn off the computer with the power button. It's so weird how iTunes continues to go, and the mouse continues to move, but no clicks work, and the slide show I was exorting in iPhoto stopped exporting. So weird. Anyway, I tried to repair disk peprmissions and it advised me to go to recovery mode and (Restart + command R) and repair the disk. That ran for about 10 minutes and then said that it couldn't repair it and that I should format it. I backed everything up yesterday and reinstalled Mountain Lion last night. Hopefully that fixed it. I'll let you know.

I am having the exact same problem!!!! Help...

@letsgettogether nope. I was gone for the weekend and wasn't able to test it out much. But it has now frozen twice in the last two days. Still not sure what the issue is. So weird how the mouse keeps moving and the audio keeps going, but all interacting with windows is gone completely on the mouse and keyboard. Hopefully there is an update that fixes this.

Same issue, Have a 2011 13" MacBook Pro, only installed Mountain Lion a couple of days ago, with OS X 10.8.1 as a clean install, has frozen two times in 3 days, mouse cursor moves but everything else unreponsove including auto brighness and buttons for keyboard back light. Freaking me out as ment to be using laptop for finishing my dissertion and delivering lectures form next week...

Same issue here. I'm on a unibody MBP 17" running OS X 10.8.1 which I installed about 5 days ago. Mine freezes without fail after it's been asleep and the only way to recover is a force reboot via holding the power button. I know this is terrible to do often so how can we avoid this?

Same problem here. I have an iMac 27", Mid 2010. The machine has been running without issues up until the 10.8 upgrade. It freezes at least once a day (if not more) on just about any program.

Other issues:

I use CoRD for remote desktop to PCs. In the middle of a session the screen on CoRD goes black. Restarting the app does not solve the issue.

On Safari or Chrome, after browsing a few pages, when trying the back gesture, the window becomes garble and does not go back. If I keep this going for long, the system freezes.

Sometimes, the system is frozen after the screen saver was on for a few hours...

Updating to 10.8.1 did not fix the issue.

I've reformatted the drive and re-installed the OS from scratch, but the freezes and issues are still here, even before I can reload all the apps.

For me this only happens on the iMac. MacBook Pro and Air are just fine.