iMac Start up

[Habu71]

Have my iMac since March and absolutely no problem. Installed Snow Leopard this weekend and worked just perfect UNTIL I turned the machine off. The next day restarted my computer and now takes about 2 minutes to boot up/then when screen comes up it is frozen for about another 2-3 minutes before can start using it. So basically, takes about 5 minutes from start up to being able to use my iMac. Spent an hour on phone with Apple on Monday night--they really tried--but couldn't fix it and now want me to bring to local Apple authorize dealer to work on it. Called them and they think it is the hard drive going out. But just doesn't make sense---worked just fine until I loaded 10.6 and then turned off machine. Before I bring it in and have them open it up and fool with the internal hard drive---DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEA'S WHAT IS HOLDING UP THE STARTUP.

 

[Jordz]

Have you tried reinstalling Snow Leopard on it again?

or even try reinstalling 10.5 again? (not sure if its possible to backtrack yet or not? someone please correct me if Im mistaken?)

Could have been a bad install?

Jordan

 

[Cinematographer]

In the system preferences, under start volume, check if you've got the right volume selected. If not, the system needs several minutes to find out which disk to start from.

If that doesn't help, I'd suggest to do a clean install again.

 

[creon]

Same thing happened to me on 10.5. One day it just took forever to start-up and soon it wouldn't start up anymore.

It's your hard drive. Had to take mine in and got it replaced and now its just as "snappy" as ever on 10.6

 

[Mike in Kansas]

Do you have an external hard drive, like one being used for Time Machine? I have three external drives, and every so often in the rare occasion that I have to re-boot it sits at the blue screen with the little icon spinning. I have to then disconnect the external drives and then it boots right up. I can then re-connect the drives and everything is fine. The majority of the time the reboots are smooth with no delays, but occasionally one of the drives will cause it to hang.