Hey folks,

Has anyone had their kernel task manager (the scheduling and swapping  
manager for the operating system) go so beserk that it sucks down  
nearly all the cpu cycles? I've searched around on the net and found  
suggestions like:

. reset the PRAM
. reset the PMU
. deleting extension caches
. cleaning out system and user caches

I've tried all of these, as well as starting in single-user mode and  
running fsck (equivalent to using the disk utility to repair the boot  
drive). My computer is still taking over 10 minutes to get from the  
login window to being 'functional'. In fact, it can run so slowly  
that it takes, oh, about 10 minutes to even log in. If I look at top  
(the command-line equivalent to the activity monitor), I see that the  
kernel task manager is using between 150% and 180% of a cpu (my mac  
mini has a dual core, so it has 200% of a cpu inside). Things can get  
so bad that logging in becomes nearly impossible because the machine  
seems to miss keystrokes when typing passwords.

This happened earlier this summer, also, but somehow resolved itself  
after 4 or 5 hours of cussing, restarting the machine, and attaching  
and detaching various external drives.

I think I found a common thread between the misbehaviors: before both  
cases, I mistakenly pulled the power cord from the back of the mini  
when trying to unplug an external drive, because the mini's power  
cord looks just like a firewire cable. In both cases the computer was  
running and was (clearly) not properly shut down.

Any clues about how to troubleshoot this?

Bill
sent from a machine which is not so finicky and aggravating 
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