9 steps to take when your Mac stops responding

I know us Mac users like to think we’re all high and mighty but let’s not kid ourselves, Mac’s are far from perfect. Our purring kitty does get fur balls once in a while and when that happens, you must take the proper steps to cough it up and get back to pouncing around!
So if your Mac starts acting strange, these are some steps you can take to help properly recover it.

1. Log out of your current session

Try to restart your session. You can log out of your current session from the Apple menu or with the Cmd+Shift+Q keyboard shortcut.

2. Reboot

Attempting to restart your system may resolve more important issues such as improper hardware recognition. From the Apple menu, select Restart.

3. Disconnect all peripherals

If problems persist, you may want to unplug all peripherals before rebooting. They may be responsible for certain system crashes.

4. Reset the PMU

If you use a laptop, resetting the Power Management Unit may resolve some common problems. To reset the PMU, shut down your Mac, unplug the power adapter and remove the battery. Next, hold the power button for at least 5 seconds. You may now reinstall your battery, reconnect the unit to a power source and restart it.
Keep in mind that resetting the PMU puts certain settings such as sleep time and backlight parameters back to default.

5. Reset the PRAM

If you’re still experiencing problems, resetting the Parameter RAM or PRAM is recommended. Start your Mac and immediately hold down Option+P+R. The computer will restart. After you’ve heard the chimes twice, release the key combination and let your system start normally.

6. Repair disk permissions

Although repairing permissions seems to be less useful in Leopard than in previous versions, it never hurts run it and repaid any eventual problems.
From the Disk Utility, select your Startup disk and from the First Aid tab, click Repair Disk Permissions.

7. Repair your Startup disk

Also in the Disk Utility are the Verify Disk and Repair Disk functions. This will correct issues with the disk directory (road map to where the data is stored on a disk or volume). Please note that you cannot repair your Startup Disk while it is booted. To repair your primary Mac OS installation disk you will have to run the Disk Utility from your installation DVD.

8. Run Software Update

Installing Apple Software Updates may resolve bugs that are causing your system to crash. To check that you have the most current version of Mac OS, select Software Update from the Apple menu.

9. Reinstall Mac OS or seek further support

If you have done all of these things and are still experiencing problems, you may want to consider completely reinstalling Mac OS or contact an Apple Care Center.