Okay, first of all, I'm posting this from an IBM laptop with WIndows XP because it has taken over 6 minutes (timed with a stop watch) for my Mac Book Pro to start up. It took 4 minutes and 53 seconds alone before the Apple logo showed up on the grey screen. I'm running OS 10.4.8 on a 2.16ghz Core Duo Mac Book Pro with 1 GB of ram and a 100GB hard drive with 30GB currently free. The only thing I can think of that could cause a prolonged start up would be the "lack" of space on the hard drive, but even with 30GB free, theres no way it should take over 6 minutes for the computer to boot the desktop. OSX has generally been kinda sluggish during normal operation as well. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm a Mac noob, so have I done something wrong here that I don't know about?