Increasing Boot Times

[vchalupa]

Hey guys,

So I've been using my mac religiously on a daily basis for almost a year now. I have noticed that progressively the boot time and shut down time is getting longer and longer. And I understand as I install programs and use the laptop more, it's going to get slower and slower but right now the boot time and shut down time is more than I would expect.

For boot up, the only applications that open on login is Mail and Quicksilver.

Is there anything I can do to reduce the boot and shut down times?

 

[Sigur]

Maybe your RAM is broken.

 

[vchalupa]

Maybe your RAM is broken.

I initially thought the RAM might be an issue but it's a new laptop with 4GB of RAM so I don't think it's the RAM


Any other suggestions?

 

[durija]

Even though you seem to have only two apps opening at login, it is possible that several apps you've installed are running things in the background at startup. I know Windows does this a lot, but I think OS X does as well. An example might be something like iTunes Helper. I'm not in front of my Mac right now, but I think it runs in the background from startup.

 

[Sigur]

I initially thought the RAM might be an issue but it's a new laptop with 4GB of RAM so I don't think it's the RAM


Any other suggestions?

After almost a year, it's not new anymore. Do you have lots of stuff in your Menubar that also starts on login?

 

[Amdahl]

Hey guys,

So I've been using my mac religiously on a daily basis for almost a year now.

Are you doing it five times a day, and facing towards Cupertino?

Is there anything I can do to reduce the boot and shut down times?

Defragment by means of iDefrag or Time Machine. (I'm beginning to doubt the effectiveness of Disk Utility cloning as a defrag method.)

iDefrag in Metadata mode + B-Tree rebuild/compact usually is all it takes to get boot speed improved and takes just a couple minutes. It clears out the hot-files area so OS X can reorganize itself over the next couple boots.

 

[SHADO]

This is what I would do:
1. Open up Disk Utility and repair permissions
2. Use DiskWarrior or Drive Genius 2 to de-frag your directory
3. If needed, reset the PRAM by holding down command+option+P+R on startup until you hear a beep and it restarts

Good Luck!

 

[vchalupa]

Are any of these defrag programs free or are they all going to cost me?

 

[vchalupa]

Defragment by means of iDefrag or Time Machine. (I'm beginning to doubt the effectiveness of Disk Utility cloning as a defrag method.)[/QUOTE]

How do you use Time Machine for defrag?

 

[vchalupa]

After almost a year, it's not new anymore. Do you have lots of stuff in your Menubar that also starts on login?

Nope, I just have the usual, airport, bluetooth, spaces, and time machine but it doesn't backup on boot.

 

[Amdahl]

How do you use Time Machine for defrag?

Make sure you have nothing excluded from your Time Machine backup, and then boot with your 10.5 DVD. Using Disk Utility, Erase your OS X partition. Then select Restore system from backup, and Time Machine will restore your system to the newly formatted drive.

 

[mckyvlle]

Are you shutting down your Mac every night?

Macs run maintenance scripts at night, if you switch is off at night, the scripts might not have a chance to run.

To run them manually, run this command in Terminal:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly

The password requested is an administrator accounts password, usually yours. The periodic command will take a while to run, and doesn't show any output.

 

[SHADO]

Make sure you have nothing excluded from your Time Machine backup, and then boot with your 10.5 DVD. Using Disk Utility, Erase your OS X partition. Then select Restore system from backup, and Time Machine will restore your system to the newly formatted drive.

That's what I was getting at when I said restore from Time Machine.