A lockup like that is definitely not the same problem. We (or your system) would crash. If things are locking up, and you have to force quit, that would definitely mean it's locked at a low level, which implies hardware issues.

Of course, 10.4.8 could be contributing to your hardware problems with something I'm not aware of, but what you're reporting here is not something we're aware of.

As far as specific elements of 10.4.9 go, we can't comment, of course.

Raid
 

O.K. I'll see what 10.4.9 does for me.

If anyone else is seeing similar hangs on Intel Mac (esp. Core 2 Duo) with 10.4.9, it would be helpful to know it's not just my drive suddenly gone bad.

Thanks...