Slower Bootup Times

[Tee.Nutter]

Hi,

I have been using my new iMac for about 4 weeks now and noticed that the boot time has increased and it does not seem to be as snappy as it was when I first turned it on. (first time mac user)

I have installed a whole host of programmes including FCP Studio, Adobe CS4etc... Would this have anything to do with the increased boot time or for the iMac to become less snappier?

Also is there an equivalent of the "msconfig" from windows to disable any start up programs? Looked in the startup folder in the library folder, but was only two things in there.

I have also watched and deleted quite big movie files on my computer, which will have caused fragmentation of the HD, but I have defragmented my HD, which did not make any difference.

Anyone else had these issues or know any resolutions?

Thanks

Tee :)

[Hoodman]

Hi
As you say the HD might be fragmented, some defrag solutions does not work well if you run them on the same HD that the OS is running, if you have another mac nearby, you could boot your in target disk mode and defrag it on the other mac... personally i don't like that, instead i erase my volume and restore it froma a backup. thats way more effective...

There's also a startup items list in System Preferences/Accounts on top there is a tab that says login items or something like that, just delete those entrys.

You could also try to zap the NVRAM, by pressing P+R+alt+command @ startup, i don't know, it might help....

:apple: Certified Support Professional

[Tee.Nutter]

Thanks Hoodman,

Will try the NVRAM and deleting the startup items.

I did the fragmentation via booting from the application (Disk Genius) DVD, as it would not allow me to defrag because it was running from the same volume.

[24usedtorock]

Put it to sleep at night rather than shutting it down.

[Tee.Nutter]

I always shutdown the mac when i'm not using it, is this a bad thing?

[Hellhammer]

I always shutdown the mac when i'm not using it, it this a bad thing?

Some people says yes, others no.

I always shut it down for overnight but when I use it at day time and I know that I'll be using it again within 8 hours I put it to sleep.

My iMac boots up in ~40 seconds and that's enough for me, because when I boot it I always do something else too eg. Booting up my PS3, getting something to drink....

[Tee.Nutter]

I always shut it down, saving energy, carbon foot print etc...

Thanks for the figure, when i first got mine it was was around 40 seconds and was telling the other half how quick it :D but now it's aleast double :mad:

[djjclark]

Look in your console window for your boot up sequence and see if there is any stalls going on.

[DoFoT9]

OP: defragging wont really help you that much, dont bark down that tree.

free up some space, repair disk permissions and whatnot.

[iLog.Genius]

IIRC, Mac OS X is already defragging in the background? Also, if you REALLY feel like it's a slow boot up, delete the Caches folder from ~/Library. If it's as bad as you say it is, that will definitely speed things up.

[DoFoT9]

IIRC, Mac OS X is already defragging in the background? Also, if you REALLY feel like it's a slow boot up, delete the Caches folder from ~/Library. If it's as bad as you say it is, that will definitely speed things up.

IIRC it automatically defrags on files ONLY under 20mb. (or maybe 10mb).

[Tee.Nutter]

The files I have been adding/deleting from my iMac are VERY BIG files and I was aware that the OS only fragmented files below 20mb, hence the reason for a defrag.

djjclark, sorry new to the Mac how would I look find the console window for the boot sequence?

[mattyb240]

Have you tried Onyx to run the OSX maintenance scripts manually?
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html

Then try downloading monolingual, this removes all unnecessary languages from your mac and applications, this saved me over 4GB of hard drive space!

http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/

Hope this helps!:apple:

[DoFoT9]

The files I have been adding/deleting from my iMac are VERY BIG files and I was aware that the OS only fragmented files below 20mb, hence the reason for a defrag.

djjclark, sorry new to the Mac how would I look find the console window for the boot sequence?

i highly doubt that would make any difference, my computer has had multiple large files put on it over the last 3 years and its perfectly fine.

[macboy4]

I always shut it down, saving energy, carbon foot print etc...

Thanks for the figure, when i first got mine it was was around 40 seconds and was telling the other half how quick it :D but now it's aleast double :mad:

Macs are VERY energy efficient even when in sleep mode... not a lot of difference between sleep and shutdown.

The money/piece of the environment you would save by shutting down instead of sleeping is negligible.

[tonka2]

Have you tried Onyx to run the OSX maintenance scripts manually?
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html

Then try downloading monolingual, this removes all unnecessary languages from your mac and applications, this saved me over 4GB of hard drive space!

http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/

Hope this helps!:apple:

I also use Onyx, a free app, about every two weeks to clean things up. I use the "Cleaning" tab and do each one except the fonts, and afterwards, maybe it's imagination, but find I have more free space and running smoother.

[Tee.Nutter]

Thanks for all the input everyone, I have tried what everyone has suggested, but don't see a real difference :(

[djjclark]

In your utilities folder is an application called Console. Running this allows you to see all kinds of log files. If you select "all messages" you should be able to see the boot process. The log contains things like enabling your Ethernet, listing your shared files on the network etc. It is all time stamped so if there are processes timing out you should be able to see them.

[RichardI]

The only time I shut down my Mac is if I'm not going to be using it for more than 2 days. I have found too that using Disk Warrior weekly to rebuild the directory keeps the Mac running fast.

Rich :cool:

[Consultant]

Perhaps you installed some trojan?

Why are you rebooting so frequently? OSX is designed to run / sleep well.

Also more RAM = longer time needed for ram check at boot up = longer boot.

[jmpage2]

In this entire thread you haven't yet indicated how long the machine actually takes to start up and get to the Leopard Desktop.

Providing this information might be useful in determining if there's even anything actually wrong with it.

[Tee.Nutter]

Sorry, it takes around 1 minute 30 seconds. I know this is not a really long time, but the reason for the concern is that when I first got the iMac used to take around 40 seconds.

Also the programs seems to take longer to respond than before.

Tried an online anti virus scanner, which came back clean.

[mattyb240]

Well if its of any use my boot up times were slowing down a bit, and I had a problem with airport and had to do a PRAM reset holding a combination of buttons, this made the laptop restart once more, after that my dock and desktop loaded instantly! And do make sure you use Onyx and Monolingual to free up space and maintenance.

I can't remember reading but did you check what items you have that happen on startup? If you go system prefs>accounts>log in items or something like that?

Just to show how much monolingual removes on my fresh OSX install:

[michael.lauden]

weird it only saved like 200MB for me

[Tee.Nutter]

reset the NVRAM on the iMac, did not see any difference.

Also ram Monolingual and it saved me over 10gb, and also done maintenance on Onxy. Unchecked login items in accounts

[applecultvictim]

Perhaps you installed some trojan?

Why are you rebooting so frequently? OSX is designed to run / sleep well.

Also more RAM = longer time needed for ram check at boot up = longer boot.

Hey consultant, I read and enjoy your posts here, what's your take on disk warrior may I ask?

[mattyb240]

reset the NVRAM on the iMac, did not see any difference.

Also ram Monolingual and it saved me over 10gb, and also done maintenance on Onxy. Unchecked login items in accounts

Is that the same as PRAM reset? I only ask I have limited internet access at the moment! PRAM should Command-Option-P-R all together while the computer boots which should restart the computer straight after.

Glad the programs saved you a little space!

[Tee.Nutter]

haha thats what I did, think must have done the PRAM

Beeped twice and then mac restarted!

[BulletToothTony]

i always believed that defragging wouldn't make a difference since os-x is made to do this "on its own".. But I always like keeping my stuff at it's ultimate state.. not only computers but cars. Ps3 etc.

I went ahead and got idefrag, but i found out right away that i had to boot up from an external drive... i went ahead and installed os-x on my firewire 800 hdd that i use for Time Machine and went ahead and did a FULL DEFRAG not an online defrag, that didn't do anything.

Sure enough my hdd was pretty fragmented with some big gaps.. this might not be a big issue but idefrag went ahead and put all the the start-up files together and compacted everything else...

Guess what, I shorted my boot up time by 8 seconds.. if you've installed cs4 i'm sure a defrag wouldn't hurt..

Overall I dunno if spending $20 is an option for you for idefrag even thou i found my copy at a certain bay and it worked great... Another thing was that i replaced my hdd from a 320gb to 1tb the boot up time even with bigger hdd got shorter after the defrag.

Even thou i put to sleep my imac all the time even over night.. i only shut off if i'm gonna be out of my house for over 24hrs.. being that the imac only uses suppodsedly 3watts while sleep.. according to the energy consumption by apple.. even thou people who have measured it with a meter say that it uses around 14-17watts.. that's still a very low consumption.

It you want a very fast boot up by a 640gb Velociraptor which spins at 10,000rpms.. may produce a bit more heat but performance will increase along with boot up times to around 25 seconds to boot up..

And there's the ultimate SSD hdd which are way too expensive right now but you can increase your bootup time to like 15 - 18 seconds.

Hope this helps

[Tee.Nutter]

I used Drive Genius and booted it from the DVD and ran the full defrag, which took about 2-3 hours.

Already have the 1tb HD and not going to open up Mac to replace drive.

I was expecting the full defrag to have helped a little but it didn't. I have over 250-300gb of applications on the HD now, maybe thats whats slowed it down.

Whats your average boot up time Tony?

[BulletToothTony]

I used Drive Genius and booted it from the DVD and ran the full defrag, which took about 2-3 hours.

Already have the 1tb HD and not going to open up Mac to replace drive.

I was expecting the full defrag to have helped a little but it didn't. I have over 250-300gb of applications on the HD now, maybe thats whats slowed it down.

Whats your average boot up time Tony?


A Brand new imac average bootup time is 30 -33 seconds..

After i defragged mine it took around 28 seconds with iDefrag, didn't try Drive genius.

With as many programs as you i would think around 43 seconds...

What brand hdd did you install? What's the rpms on it? is it a 5400?

Also... sometimes it takes almost a minute for my imac to boot up, very rare thou.. usually when it takes longer than the usual 5 seconds to shut down means is gonna take longer to boot up..

[jmpage2]

I just tested my 4850 Radeon iMac 2.93 with stock hard drive, RAM, etc. Took one full minute from the boot chime till the desktop was up. It was slow for about another 10 seconds after that as you could tell it was still getting things loaded up into memory.

It might have been a bit faster when I first got it but I haven't really noticed. I've also set up Boot Camp with Win 7 on it as well as loading quite a few applications including Office, Lightroom, etc.

//edit

Also worth noting that I have six network shares in my startup items.

[Tee.Nutter]

Thanks for the times Tony, when I first got the iMac it was around 30-35seconds. Everything thing is stock as per my signature.

Think it might be worth trying iDefrag

I just tested my 4850 Radeon iMac 2.93 with stock hard drive, RAM, etc. Took one full minute from the boot chime till the desktop was up. It was slow for about another 10 seconds after that as you could tell it was still getting things loaded up into memory.

It might have been a bit faster when I first got it but I haven't really noticed. I've also set up Boot Camp with Win 7 on it as well as loading quite a few applications including Office, Lightroom, etc.

//edit

Also worth noting that I have six network shares in my startup items.

I don't have anything networked to my Mac, do you think the network shares slow down the boot time?

[jmpage2]

Thanks for the times Tony, when I first got the iMac it was around 30-35seconds. Everything thing is stock as per my signature.

Think it might be worth trying iDefrag



I don't have anything networked to my Mac, do you think the network shares slow down the boot time?

I have no idea I just figured that it was worth mentioning. I don't really notice the boot time but I'm sure that after I installed software, set up start up items, etc, it doesn't boot quite as fast as it does when it's got nothing set up on it.