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S---L---O---W startup time..... advice please.

anim8or

anim8or

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 16, 2006
1,362
9
Scotland, UK
Hello all,

Firstly I have searched and read many threads similar to my question but every case is different to my setup or not similar enought to answer my query.

I have a 2007 Mac Pro Quad core 2.66GHz, 7GB RAM, 3 Internal HDDs (two in a RAID config) 2 external Firewire drives, 2 ACDs, bluetooth aluminum apple keyboard and mouse.

Fresh out of the box my boot times were magic, about 15-20 secs and i could start using anything, now my boot times are about 1:15secs!!!!

I am counting from the moment i press the power button to the moment the desktop is up and running ready to use.

I have tried running the maintenance scripts, repaired permissions, etc b ut still no increase in boot time.

Can anyone advise on what i should try to speed things up a little?

Thanks in advance
 
i only have a couple of login items, such as ituneshelper....

I am on my MBP just now so i cant tell you exactly which ones i have, how do i know if any are needed at startup? I dont want to selete them as startup items and not get them back.....
 
start up in verbose mode (cmd-V) and see if you can see where its hanging. Mine used to pause for a while loading the Ethernet drivers.
 
anim8or said:
How do i do that...? What should i look for?
Click to expand...

Console.app. There's a list of logs down the left-hand side.
"system.log" is a good one to look at. You'll need to be in
the admin account to view it. Log entries have a timestamp
to the left. Look for timestamps that match the time when
your system was booting.
 
richthomas said:
in addition to the above recommendations i would repair permissions and use the automation feature in Onyx and then restart a few times to reload the system kexts.
Click to expand...

In addition (or alternative), I would:

1. Reset the PRAM (at boot, hold down cmd-opt-p-r keys until the third "bong" and then let go of the keys).

2. Boot in "safe mode" which does many things like clearing caches, running file system checks and making necessary repairs (fsck in unix), etc. To do this, reboot and when you hear the bong, immediately hold down the shift key until you see the "spinning gear" on the grey screen. At that point let go of the shift key. This boot will take some time as it is doing many things, but eventually you will have the login screen with "Safe boot enabled" message in red letters. You can then reboot normally.

See if this helps.
 
Try XSlimmer to slim down and unnecessary usage and see if it reduces anything. There's also something else beginning with F you can to but I've forgotten. :eek:
 
merl1n said:
In addition (or alternative), I would:

1. Reset the PRAM (at boot, hold down cmd-opt-p-r keys until the third "bong" and then let go of the keys).

2. Boot in "safe mode" which does many things like clearing caches, running file system checks and making necessary repairs (fsck in unix), etc. To do this, reboot and when you hear the bong, immediately hold down the shift key until you see the "spinning gear" on the grey screen. At that point let go of the shift key. This boot will take some time as it is doing many things, but eventually you will have the login screen with "Safe boot enabled" message in red letters. You can then reboot normally.

See if this helps.
Click to expand...

This is what I would do first - I've had reboot issues and this always resolves them.
 
merl1n said:
In addition (or alternative), I would:

1. Reset the PRAM (at boot, hold down cmd-opt-p-r keys until the third "bong" and then let go of the keys).

2. Boot in "safe mode" which does many things like clearing caches, running file system checks and making necessary repairs (fsck in unix), etc. To do this, reboot and when you hear the bong, immediately hold down the shift key until you see the "spinning gear" on the grey screen. At that point let go of the shift key. This boot will take some time as it is doing many things, but eventually you will have the login screen with "Safe boot enabled" message in red letters. You can then reboot normally.

See if this helps.
Click to expand...

EvanLugh said:
Try XSlimmer to slim down and unnecessary usage and see if it reduces anything. There's also something else beginning with F you can to but I've forgotten. :eek:
Click to expand...

That's what I meant. :eek:
 
merl1n said:
In addition (or alternative), I would:

1. Reset the PRAM (at boot, hold down cmd-opt-p-r keys until the third "bong" and then let go of the keys).

2. Boot in "safe mode" which does many things like clearing caches, running file system checks and making necessary repairs (fsck in unix), etc. To do this, reboot and when you hear the bong, immediately hold down the shift key until you see the "spinning gear" on the grey screen. At that point let go of the shift key. This boot will take some time as it is doing many things, but eventually you will have the login screen with "Safe boot enabled" message in red letters. You can then reboot normally.

See if this helps.
Click to expand...

After reading this thread I thought I'd give resetting the PRAM a try to see what would happen. In my case it actually made my boot time about 20 seconds longer for some strange reason and now I can't seem to find a remedy.

When I reboot or power on my Mac Pro now, there is a grey blank screen for about 20 seconds. Then, the grey screen with the Apple logo appears along with the spinning loading meter at the bottom and my computer proceeds to boot from there.

Does anyone know what happened with my Mac Pro here? It used to go immediately to the grey screen with the Apple logo before resetting my PRAM.
 
How many sticks of ram do you have in it? I noticed that my machine took much longer to boot up once I upped my ram.
 
bld44 said:
How many sticks of ram do you have in it? I noticed that my machine took much longer to boot up once I upped my ram.
Click to expand...


Yup, more RAM, the more time the computer needs to spend "approving" the RAM to be used.

7Gbs, thats a lot of RAM. Pull some out, see if its fast. If it is, then at least you know its the RAM, and not something else.
 
freezerburrn said:
After reading this thread I thought I'd give resetting the PRAM a try to see what would happen. In my case it actually made my boot time about 20 seconds longer for some strange reason and now I can't seem to find a remedy.

When I reboot or power on my Mac Pro now, there is a grey blank screen for about 20 seconds. Then, the grey screen with the Apple logo appears along with the spinning loading meter at the bottom and my computer proceeds to boot from there.

Does anyone know what happened with my Mac Pro here? It used to go immediately to the grey screen with the Apple logo before resetting my PRAM.
Click to expand...

Well, I can't seem to figure out what's going on here. I'm going to take out my battery overnight and see if that does anything.
 
freezerburrn said:
Well, I can't seem to figure out what's going on here. I'm going to take out my battery overnight and see if that does anything.
Click to expand...

Okay so taking out the battery did absolutely nothing just as I thought. However, reselecting my main drive in System Preferences/Startup Disk did the trick. Now I have no blank grey screen lag.
 
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