Re-install Mavericks without losing apps, configurations, etc

Boot up holding command-r keys into your Recovery Volume.

First run Disk Utility > Repair Disk, if you get errors run until no errors reported or reports "the disk cannot be fixed". Then, choose Reinstall OS X. This will be an install "in place" and shouldn't effect any of your own data or settings.

That said you should always have a good backup, anything can happen at any time, not just during installing.

Also, before you re-install have you tried shutting down from your Guest account? It may be a problem in your Home folder in which case re-installing won't help. It also may be some third process.

The only way to properly test would be to do a clean install, which is a PITA.

Have you run AHT (Apple Hardware Test)?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1509

If hardware passes all test (i'd run at lesat 10 loops and you'll want to do that ovenight) you could try a Time Machine full restore from a previous date. Or, a clean install with selective migration from TM.

EDIT: Have you run EtreCheck a simple diagnostic utility that might turn up something?

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

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 icon grid.

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. If you don't see that menu, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar.

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 after you had the problem. Select the messages logged before the boot, while the system was unresponsive or was failing to shut down. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V). Please include the BOOT_TIME message at the end of the log extract.

If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.

When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.

Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Step 2

Still in Console, look under System Diagnostic Reports for crash or panic logs, and post the entire contents of 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 any other kind of report — it will be very long and not helpful.

Thanks!. This is exactly the information that I was looking for.

BGmail wrote:

After reading posts on internet and here I am confused on how to reinstall Mavericks without losing all my data.

Even if you did lose all your data, it wouldn't matter, because you've got a backup. Haven't you?