Startup Problem 10.6.8

[dpo]

Recently 'down'graded back to 10.6.8 on my Macbook Air from a Carbon Copy Clone backup.

Since which time there have been quite a few quirks, one of them is that frequently when starting up the login window does not respond to key presses. I have to close the lid, wait a few moments, then open it back up, and it's responsive.

Anyone run into this?

[spacedrabbit]

that's a very specific quirk. the loginwindow process (/System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app) handles that initial login screen, so if there's a problem there, there's a good chance one or more of your core system services has become corrupted.

I dont know how feasible it is, but you can try trashing you /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist, which are the settings for the login window defined under User and Groups, and then restarting the Mac. I think the OS should rebuild that plist on next startup.

if things get bad, you may just have to start from scratch

Just have backups on hand before doing anything :)

[dpo]

Thanks, I tried this, and I could start back up again okay, but I am still experiencing severe login window unresponsiveness for up to a minute, which is obviously a shame on a fast-booting SSD MBA...

Perhaps it's something to do with the number of NTFS drives I have connected (and spotlight-indexed). This was unproblematic, but with my recent Lion up- and downgrade, things seem to have gotten out of kilter.