Slow loading bar when starting OS X

That-Is-Bull · Oct 2, 2009

I burned Ubuntu Linux onto a CD and restarted my iMac while holding alt to boot into it. The CD didn't show up because I accidentally burned it as a data disc containing the ISO file, but my OS X partition is now for some reason displayed as "EFI Boot."

I selected it and it showed the usual startup screen with the Apple logo, then a spinning gear and a loading bar showed up under it.

It took 5-10 minutes to get past that screen, then OS X started up like normal. I tried ejecting the CD (which I did absolutely nothing with other than burn and leave in the drive) to see if that was what caused it, but it did the same thing when I restarted and it's still been doing it since.

Anybody know what the problem is?

Makosuke · Oct 2, 2009

The only time I've seen that bar was during a firmware upgrade, but that doesn't sound like what you've got going on at all.

Have you tried reselecting the OSX drive via the Startup Disk pref pane (or control panel in Windows)? Maybe even selecting something ELSE, closing the pref pane, re-opening it, and re-selecting it, just to make absolutely sure it sticks.

That-Is-Bull · Oct 9, 2009

Makosuke said:
Have you tried reselecting the OSX drive via the Startup Disk pref pane (or control panel in Windows)? Maybe even selecting something ELSE, closing the pref pane, re-opening it, and re-selecting it, just to make absolutely sure it sticks.

It automatically chooses OS X when I turn on the computer, it just shows EFI Boot when I hold alt.

benjimoodie · Oct 16, 2009

Hey, I've had this twice since going to snow leopard, First time i had to use my time machine backup and this time I think the same happened to you as it did to me.
If you load your mac os x disc and go to disk utility and verify disk, then it will say it needs repairing, repair it and it should load fine.

That-Is-Bull · Oct 16, 2009

benjimoodie said:
If you load your mac os x disc and go to disk utility and verify disk, then it will say it needs repairing, repair it and it should load fine.

I tried repairing from my Snow Leopard disk, it said that it's unable to repair Macintosh HD and I need to back up as much data as possible and reformat the volume.

I haven't had any problems other than the ten minute startups and the occasional kernel panic (which I'm pretty sure is unrelated) so I'm just going to live with it until I build a new computer and reformat this one for my parents anyway.

benjimoodie · Oct 17, 2009

Thats what it said to me, i just formatted and used my old time machine cause my os wouldn't load at all, not a 10 minute loading time, just not loading!!!
Well good luck with it all.

BTW the first time it happened to me, I had been fiddling about with my network adaptors and settings on vista and then when i restarted it went like that, I dunno if you did anything like that.

marzy · Oct 18, 2009

I'm getting the same problem but I installed new ram, in my mid/late 2007 macbook pro. I'm going to try and do a disk repair using the snow leopard dvd.

BlueRevolution · Oct 18, 2009

Have you tried resetting your PRAM? Command+option+P+R on startup.

marzy · Oct 18, 2009

Ok so I tried repairing the disk from the snow leopard install disks and it said volume repair complete pretty much straight away and then said updating boot support partitions for the volume as required. Then said it stopped repairing and that I should backup all my data and format.

Problems I was having before this were the finder kept refreshing and i noticed a heap of folders in on my hard drive example of one "MSI32350.tmp" there are about 8 folders like that, there is also a file "20091016231546.crash_recovery" so I tried to delete them and it says "The operation can't be completed because one or more required items can't be found." then i opened my trash and there was nothing in it. Then I deleted something off my desktop and then there were a whole lot of things in the trash, (things i had put in there few days before) then i took the same file back out and there was nothing in there again, i put it back in and there is everything again and I was able to empty the trash.

So something is fishy, starting to look like the hard drive is slowly getting corrupted. I wonder why the problems with snow leopard are serious, i remember leopard only had stupid little bugs. But this is a second problem that we could be loosing data.

I'll try restarting the PRAM in a sec and get back too you but I don't think it's going to fix the issue.

Edit: o I don't have the problem with the drive be a different name. Mine is still what I named it.

marzy · Oct 18, 2009

So I reset the PRAM twice and it did nothing. Maybe tomorrow I'll try installing the old ram again and see what it does then but I'm thinking that isn't going to help either. I think it's a problem with Snow Leopard and it's corrupting the drive. Also to note I have noticed that one of those folders have shown back up again on the drive. They have nothing in them, unless the files are hidden.

Makosuke · Oct 18, 2009

marzy said:
Ok so I tried repairing the disk from the snow leopard install disks and it said volume repair complete pretty much straight away and then said updating boot support partitions for the volume as required. Then said it stopped repairing and that I should backup all my data and format.

Ok, if you're getting that boot support error from Disk Utility, that would sort of explain everything--something got munged up with the partition map, which is causing booting problems and could easily cause who-knows-what-else. Could've been Windows doing something to cause it, could have just been really bad luck.

Backup your data ASAP. Then if you've got an external drive with enough space clone the drive to it, wipe, reformat the internal drive, reinstall, reimport data. Doing a partition-only clone to a freshly formatted drive, then the same in reverse, might bypass the corruption, but I wouldn't take any chances with it--if the partition map gets hosed, everything gets hosed.

I also wouldn't be inclined to blame it on Snow Leopard--just last week I was working on a friend's iMac with that EXACT problem running on 10.5 (symptoms didn't include the boot selector, but did include everything else you're having trouble with except the weird progress bar).

The good news was, at least in my case, the drive itself wasn't bad, just corrupt, and after a reinstall and using Migration assistant to move the data back to the fresh install it ran perfectly. Hopefully your situation is the same.

[Side note: It occurs to me that maybe the progress bar in place of the spinner is new in 10.6--the "spinner" stage of boot is where the OS will run a disk check if something is wrong, and instead of sitting there indefinitely maybe they switched it to a progress bar to give some indication that it's doing something and prevent people forcing a reboot thinking it's stuck. It of course can't fix the problem, but it's still going to try--the one I worked on spent about 5 minutes on the spinner trying to fix the corruption before moving on.]

marzy · Oct 18, 2009

Makosuke said:
Ok, if you're getting that boot support error from Disk Utility, that would sort of explain everything--something got munged up with the partition map, which is causing booting problems and could easily cause who-knows-what-else. Could've been Windows doing something to cause it, could have just been really bad luck.

Backup your data ASAP. Then if you've got an external drive with enough space clone the drive to it, wipe, reformat the internal drive, reinstall, reimport data. Doing a partition-only clone to a freshly formatted drive, then the same in reverse, might bypass the corruption, but I wouldn't take any chances with it--if the partition map gets hosed, everything gets hosed.

I also wouldn't be inclined to blame it on Snow Leopard--just last week I was working on a friend's iMac with that EXACT problem running on 10.5 (symptoms didn't include the boot selector, but did include everything else you're having trouble with except the weird progress bar).

The good news was, at least in my case, the drive itself wasn't bad, just corrupt, and after a reinstall and using Migration assistant to move the data back to the fresh install it ran perfectly. Hopefully your situation is the same.

[Side note: It occurs to me that maybe the progress bar in place of the spinner is new in 10.6--the "spinner" stage of boot is where the OS will run a disk check if something is wrong, and instead of sitting there indefinitely maybe they switched it to a progress bar to give some indication that it's doing something and prevent people forcing a reboot thinking it's stuck. It of course can't fix the problem, but it's still going to try--the one I worked on spent about 5 minutes on the spinner trying to fix the corruption before moving on.]

O ok thats good to know about the spinning in 10.5. I just figured it was snow leopard as a few of us are having the same problem but I guess it's hard to know.

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