Leopard: Slow boot and shut down times

[lazymej]

Well by all means the Leopard boot and shut down times are not SLOW, but I found that Tiger was so so so much faster at this. Is it just me or do you guys have this too?

[atszyman]

Well by all means the Leopard boot and shut down times are not SLOW, but I found that Tiger was so so so much faster at this. Is it just me or do you guys have this too?

How long have you had the system installed? could it still be indexing for Spotlight? Do you shutdown often after brief up-times? is there an external drive attached that could be getting a Time Machine backup in progress that has to complete the current process before shutting down?

[rogersmj]

Do you have any leftover apps from Tiger that are set to start at boot but may not be working properly? My Last.fm client was set to start at boot, and as it turns out it won't run in Leopard, so it was hanging the system for awhile when it was booting up.

[vega07]

I have very fast boot up and shut down times. I think even faster than Tiger. Try a reinstall.

[rogersmj]

Try a reinstall.

What is this, Windows? Don't waste time with a reinstall, that's a last resort. That is bad, lazy advice.

[benlee]

I find that my startup seems a little bit slower sometimes. But my Tiger boots varied, randomly. And in Tiger sometime it would take a little bit to load the menu bar. In Leopard its almost instant.
My Leopard shutdown time seem way faster.

Don't do a reinstall. That is not likely to fix anything with boot times unless there is some sort of conflict.

Go with the other advice on this page and see if that helps.

[lazymej]

hmm ya I'm thinking that there's some iffy stuff left over since I upgraded. When I was running Tiger my MBP would boot up and shut down like lightning. Restarts weren't an inconvenience whatsoever. But now with Leopard it takes several seconds longer. When shutting down the screen goes black for like just under 10 seconds before actually switching off. Tiger was instantaneous.

So I guess you aren't having this problem then..

[donmakaveli]

I got a macbook pro 2.4ghz 15 inch model one of the best specs out and i still find that leopard boots alot slower then tiger did. Tiger used to load fast on my macbook pro but not as fast as it did on my imac which as of a 2.16ghz spec. That i dont understand why? Although the leopard issue seems to be a common problem hopefully a software update should cure it.

[CEBEP]

Hi guys,

I have MacBook and Leopard installed from the very beginning. Everything was fine until I have installed the RAID software from my 1TB WesternDigital hard drive. At least as of that day my Mac stated to boot much slower.

I see the dock appearing almost immediately but it will take a minute or so for the menu to appear.

Anybody can suggest? Is there something like a start menu in Mac so I can see what is launching and slows/freezes up the boot?

[goranius]

hmm ya I'm thinking that there's some iffy stuff left over since I upgraded. When I was running Tiger my MBP would boot up and shut down like lightning. Restarts weren't an inconvenience whatsoever. But now with Leopard it takes several seconds longer. When shutting down the screen goes black for like just under 10 seconds before actually switching off. Tiger was instantaneous.

So I guess you aren't having this problem then..

I'm experiencing the EXACT same thing! I have a 2,6GHz MBP for crying out loud...
It's driving me crazy!!!

[vansouza]

Someone started a thread about how long the blue screen lasts at boot up. Mine was less then 4 seconds until I went from 2 to 4 gigs of ram. What Tiger does to that ram at boot up is beyond me, but perhaps with more ram and external hard drives; it just takes takes more time to do what needs to be done. :confused:

[ying yang]

I had horrible boot and shutdown times after upgrading to Leopard. I also got the beachball seemingly every five minutes while using Finder, iTunes, safari, pretty much anything, especially since updating to 10.5.1.

Today, I backed up my stuff and did a completely clean Leopard install. The difference is amazing. It feels like Tiger again. Fast as hell to boot and shutdown, and "snappy" as heck otherwise. It's excellent. I thought the "do a clean install" thing was ******** but apparently it makes a huge difference, at least to me.

[CEBEP]

I had horrible boot and shutdown times after upgrading to Leopard. I also got the beachball seemingly every five minutes while using Finder, iTunes, safari, pretty much anything, especially since updating to 10.5.1.

Today, I backed up my stuff and did a completely clean Leopard install. The difference is amazing. It feels like Tiger again. Fast as hell to boot and shutdown, and "snappy" as heck otherwise. It's excellent. I thought the "do a clean install" thing was ******** but apparently it makes a huge difference, at least to me.



After clean install is everyrthing is ereased? Or programs/files remain?

[vansouza]

After clean install is everyrthing is ereased? Or programs/files remain?

If you do the Archive and Install; it is clean and everything remains...

[CEBEP]

If you do the Archive and Install; it is clean and everything remains...

but will Archive and Install solve the problem?

[vansouza]

but will Archive and Install solve the problem?

Archive and Install is a clean install that keeps your current settings. If the problem lingers then you can do a totally clean install to see if that helps...

[Schtumple]

Leopards ALOT slower to boot and shut down for me, my girlfriends macbook (2ghz, 1gb ram etc) smokes my imac (2ghz, 1gb ram etc) on both shut down and boot up times, tempted to do a archive and install to see if that'll fix it.

[KurtangleTN]

I noticed this slightly too, my startup times are good but were better in Tiger.

I only have the upgrade disk from Apple, are there any other solutions?

[cheezebob]

mine was very slow to shut down, but then i uninstalled iStat pro and it goes much faster

[CEBEP]

Archive and Install is a clean install that keeps your current settings. If the problem lingers then you can do a totally clean install to see if that helps...

thanks, Archive and install solved the problem. though after reinstall my MacBook did not accept my password and I had to reset it :)

[vrillusions]

I've found that while startup is fine, shutdown takes FOREVER. I look at the console logs afterwards and it's just 2-3 minutes of nothing. It could be something running that leopard doesn't like but I've checked that all my start on login items are fine, and I've tried starting up and immediately shutting down again and it still takes a couple minutes for it to shut down.

I did an upgrade from tiger which I've heard a lot of people having issues with (going from panther to tiger was fine). Even tried cleaning out disk space to see if that would help and nothing.

btw, the people that say startup is slow after a system update, that's because os x clears all it's caches after it does a big system update (and maybe after some security patches). So the first time it boots up it has to regenerate all those caches again. That's why programs will take a long to startup as well. There's a reason they tell you to keep PLENTY of free space on OS X.

[jonyboy]

I did a comple of test i have a macbook pro and i run dual boot windows & mac os x leopart. if I eject my window dics and quit (command - Q ) Finder. My macbook pro shutdowns istinsly. if i dont do this it takes a big minute do shutdown.

To quit your finder you have to type something in in your terminal to enable this !!!!

To get full control over your Finder application, you can add a Quit menupoint to your Finder if you type this into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem -bool yes

so 2 steps:
Eject your windows Disk on your desktop.
Quit your finder (command - Q)

hit the power punten en klik shutdown or restart ;)

have fun at trying this.:)

my notebook pro is a month old so leopart was running from the beginning.

[MrT8064]

this sadly didn't fix it for me, any other ideas?

[jonyboy]

It does't work all the time i don't know why maybe you have to quit finder a comple times by command - q it a few times.

grtz jony

[MrT8064]

hi, i called apple, and they had no idea...


...so i played around with a few things, and fixed the problem.

i have EyeTV running, and i had turned on that thing where you can watch your eyetv stuff on your iPhone; well, i turned this function totally off.

i also removed Folding@home (i doubt this is a factor)

anyway, my mac now turns off in 6 seconds, thats an improvement on the previous 50 seconds!!

[orpheus1120]

I think it is proven that Leopard boots slowe than Tiger. Most people including myself encounter this problem.

For Tiger, I boot up in 25 secs max.

For Leopard, it is 35 secs. So an increase of 40% bootup time compared to Tiger.

I viewed the console log and saw some error logs which led me to believe this slow down is due primarily to having non-leopard tested apps present in the system.

For those of you who upgraded to Leopard from Tiger, and chose the Archive and Install option (this is what I did), you will most likely see error codes in the console logs once you upgraded. For example, I've got errors on MS Office 2004 etc. The system has to solve these extra errors before finally bootup which I believe leads to the slower boot time. I can't post the exact log of my system right now because I'm at my office's PC. Perhaps later I will do so.

Even if you do a clean install, the situation may not improve if you decide to install the non-leopard tested apps later. Perhaps the 10.5.2 updates will fix most of these problems.

Anyone knows if MS Office 2004 is leopard-friendly? I search for updates on office site and there's no updates on Office 2004.

[Amdahl]

Anyone knows if MS Office 2004 is leopard-friendly? I search for updates on office site and there's no updates on Office 2004.

I doubt they will issue any update for Leopard. Virtual PC 7 is not going to be supported (apparently), so problems mounting physical CD and the little Dock-bounce glitch will continue unless they can be fixed from Apple's side.

[vansouza]

Right after I installed Leopard it was absolutely booting faster then Tiger; but since I upgraded the ram from 2 to 4 gigs both shut downs and startups are much slower... and if it has to check out the 1Tb drive first that could be adding time I guess...

[Lurgen]

Brand new Mac Pro, 6GB, 2 x 750GB hard drives (turfed the standard 320GB drive)....

Startup and shutdowns were brilliant at first, 15 seconds to fire up, 10 to shut down. Then it suddenly turned into 5 minutes for startup and just as long for shutdown.

Turned out to be my USB hard drive (NTFS) that caused it. Not sure if the NTFS bit was the cause, or the USB aspect. Either way, disconnecting the external drive sorted it out immediately.

[eskdale]

I've been having this issue too, I am going to try and spend sometime to resolve it today.

I do use time machine with an external wireless time capsule, but currently time machine is off after it stopped being able to mount the volume.

I have noticed the change most in the shut down times.

I have a number of older apps that might be the issue, I'll post my findings up and see if it helps.

[jonyboy]

If you have windows
just unmount windows disk
en shutdown

Then you have a fast shutdown :)

[OMGWTFBBQ]

Brand new Mac Pro, 6GB, 2 x 750GB hard drives (turfed the standard 320GB drive)....

Startup and shutdowns were brilliant at first, 15 seconds to fire up, 10 to shut down. Then it suddenly turned into 5 minutes for startup and just as long for shutdown.

Turned out to be my USB hard drive (NTFS) that caused it. Not sure if the NTFS bit was the cause, or the USB aspect. Either way, disconnecting the external drive sorted it out immediately.

I have nearly the same setup -- mac pro (2008) 6 gigs of ram two WD 640s and a 500 and I get a 6 second shutdown (I had to reset the SMC--prior to that I was getting 30 second shutdowns) and a 36 second startup. How are you getting a 15 second startup?! :confused: I want that!

[Enlade]

Well by all means the Leopard boot and shut down times are not SLOW, but I found that Tiger was so so so much faster at this. Is it just me or do you guys have this too?

I had the same problem. It would take a very long time to boot. So, I ran the font manager (just double click on a font in the fonts folder System\Library\Fonts) and I ran the font check and found a few bad fonts. But I also noticed a lot of fonts that I know I just will never use. So, I went through each and disabled each that I would never use. Now when I rebooted the machine it started up just fine. For me it was just too many and/or bad fonts.

Prior to fixing the fonts, I also did a safe mode boot (hold shift key down during boot up...and it should ask you to log in as an administrator account). That boot up does a bit of work on the file system that could fix the problem for you as well.

And after that attempt to fix the problem, I also did a boot to the installation CD. After you boot you can go into the tools section and run the Hard Drive manager. In there you can run a check and repair of the hard drives. I ran all those checks and repairs. You should try that as well.

However, in the end the problem for me ended up being bad fonts. Disabling the fonts I didn't need and the bad ones fixed it for me.

[mobidev]

How long have you had the system installed? could it still be indexing for Spotlight? Do you shutdown often after brief up-times? is there an external drive attached that could be getting a Time Machine backup in progress that has to complete the current process before shutting down?

me also suffering from the slow startup and shutdown.
For my system spotlight is indexing, but when i try to stop the indexing from system preference -> spotlight -> privacy tab , the system preference is getting crashed.

I do also facing some more problems , such as Dock not showing, windows not getting minimized and application folder from the finder getting crashed when trying to open it.

Do this all may be due to Spotlight indexing the hardware or else any other prblm. if its becoz of spotlight indexing , then is there any other way to stop index by terminal...etc