iMac with Snow Leopard takes 20 mins to start up

[lofight]

The problem is, each time I restart my computer or put it back on again, it takes around 20 mins to start up. At the grey screen there is a grey bar that takes 20 mins to load...

Should I reinstall snow leopard?

 

[spinnerlys]

Is the iMac you talk about the one in your signature? How much HDD capacity is left on it? And do you have the option to do a Clean Install of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard?

 

[Hellhammer]

Reset SMC and PRAM and run Disk Utility. Also see the clean installation as said above.

Any other weird behavior like long app launch times? If there are, then your HD may be on its last legs

 

[lofight]

Is the iMac you talk about the one in your signature? How much HDD capacity is left on it? And do you have the option to do a Clean Install of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard?

Yes that's the one. I have 47 GB free + a windows partition which I could delete. I already have Snow Leopard and I would rather not clean install it. I don't want to back-up everything...

Reset SMC and PRAM and run Disk Utility. Also see the clean installation as said above.

Any other weird behavior like long app launch times? If there are, then your HD may be on its last legs

I'll try resetting SMC and PRAM. My apps launch fast...

 

[DewGuy1999]

Mac OS X v10.6: Gray progress bar appears under Apple logo during startup

 

[S.B.G]

Why don't you want to back up? It's so easy with Time Machine. I just installed a new HDD the other day and did a clean SL install and used the Time Machine backup to restore my files and settings.

If I didn't know my HDD was replaced I wouldn't have noticed that I had anything done to the OS.

Backing up is very essential to preventing data loss.