Keychain Issue - Slow Boot / Safe Boot. Guidance on best approach pls?

[tigerintank]

Looking for some advice - ideally avoid reinstalling Mohave - but if that's the right thing to do then will do that.

Have a rMBP late 2013 (11,1) on Mohave with all updates.

• Noticed slow (3-4 mins) boot earlier - then it came up in safe mode.
• Decided to back up my important files to external disk -before doing anything else.
• Noticed amongst the files in my public folder - the Login.keychain! Thought that was odd, but as I had the other issue - I just made a copy and moved the original from public to desktop - as leaving a keychain in public felt risky!
• Subsequent boot was really quick, but lots of missing login keychain messages - 'Keychain "login" cannot be found to store "handoff-own-encryption-key"' is one example.
• Tried moving login.keychian into library/keychain folder - same messages / problems - forget how long this boot took.
• Tried add keychain option in keychain app - same messages / problems - back to minutes for boot.

Main question is - how to get login keychain file into right location and recognised as being there - as far as the keychain app is concerned?

Its probably worth also saying that I've been prompted for my password after booting (iirc its 2 or 3 times), since I moved to Mohave a couple of years back. But as I only reboot every couple of months I've not worried about it. Iirc when I upgraded I did something wrong at the time - dont remember what though!

Sorry for long post - trying to provide anything relevant.

 

[appltech]

In general, it's not a good practice to move any keychains manually. And it's not an easy job to get them back, once they are corrupted (for any reason). I'd suggest resetting the login keychain (check for any items that you might need back, like those encryption keys before proceeding). Check those articles for help: Apple, osxdaily.
Also, it might be a good idea to run First Aid on your main volume, it might detect and fix any issues with the OS and/or drive itself. Open Disk Utility, select the volume and hit First Aid at the top (help).
In the end, simple macOS reinstall from Recovery mode is always a viable solution (provided you've already backed up everything).

 

[tigerintank]

Thank you - I'll take a look at those links & run first aid as you suggest.

Been considering the reinstall over last few days - think I'll see how I get on with your suggestions above first and see if things are stable then.