My wife her iMac (10.6.8) went suddenly bananas. Kept a spinning beach-ball after half way startup. Restarted 3 times cmd-alt-p-r. Didn't help. Used DiskWarrior. Didn't help. Started in safe mode and went for the last combo update. (I had that downloaded long ago) Restarted 3 times cmd-alt-p-r. Was OK now. I don't now what went wrong. Paul Moortgat