MacBook boots and shuts down slower

[g-boac]

I've owned my MacBook (2.2GHz, 160GB HDD/90GB available, 1GB RAM, Santa Rosa, Leopard) for about a month, and installed MS Office Student & Teacher Edition onto it about a week ago. On or about the time I installed Office, I noticed that it seems to take longer to both boot up and shut down.

It used to be that I pushed the button, and I got the "moving circle" animation for 5-10s prior to the login screen, and upon logging in, my desktop was almost instantly up and available. When I shut down, within 3-4 seconds, the screen would go dark and the computer would shut off a couple seconds after that.

Now, it seems that the "moving circle" runs for about 15-20s on bootup, and upon logging in the desktop takes a couple seconds to come up -- the dock will appear first, then the Macintosh HD icon, then the menu bar. This is not a terrible delay, but it is noticeable. Upon shutdown, the "moving circle" animation runs for a good 15-20s before the screen goes dark.

My questions are: [1] does Leopard have or allow background programs to run latently upon startup? Is this caused because MS Office installed some sort of program(s) that load on startup and run automatically in the background? [2] In Leopard, how can I tell if, and what, programs or processes are running in the background? [3] In Leopard, are there "advanced" ways of launching programs or processes to run automatically (i.e., is there a "Windows Registry" (barf!) file, or an "autoexec.bat" equivalent on Leopard)?

I'd appreciate any tips or insight anybody can offer -- I'd like to get to the bottom of what may be causing my performance drain on startup and shutdown.

thanks!
Mark

 

[tersono]

Stuff that runs on startup will be in one of three places:

1. Login items under your user name on the accounts prefpane
2. /Library/StartupItems
3. /System/Library/StartupItems

 

[Mydel]

Also Activity Monitor will show you all processes running.

 

[JSchwage]

Have you tried repairing permissions on your hard drive? If not, go into the Utilities folder in your Applications folder and open Disk Utility. Then select your OS X partition (usually Macintosh HD) and click the Repair Permissions button.

 

[g-boac]

Have you tried repairing permissions on your hard drive? If not, go into the Utilities folder in your Applications folder and open Disk Utility. Then select your OS X partition (usually Macintosh HD) and click the Repair Permissions button.

No, but I can give that a shot. What does repairing permissions do?

 

[g-boac]

Stuff that runs on startup will be in one of three places:

1. Login items under your user name on the accounts prefpane
2. /Library/StartupItems
3. /System/Library/StartupItems

Thanks! This was helpful. If I may, I have a couple of follow-up questions, please.

[a] Both StartupItems folders in /Library and /System/Library were empty. Any chance there can be hidden files in there, and if so, how can I show them?
What is the difference between files in the /Library folder and the /System/Library folder? i.e., files in the /Library folder are used how and when, and files in the /System/Library folder are used how and when?
[c]I did find three items in the Login Items window:
-AirPort Base Station Agent
-iTunesHelper ["Hide" checkbox is checked]
-Microsoft AU Daemon

Can anyone offer me any insight as to what these programs do (especially this Microsoft AU Daemon) and how essential it is that they be running?

Just out of curiosity, anybody know what iTunesHelper does??

thanks!
Mark

 

[srl7741]

Thanks! This was helpful. If I may, I have a couple of follow-up questions, please.

[a] Both StartupItems folders in /Library and /System/Library were empty. Any chance there can be hidden files in there, and if so, how can I show them?
What is the difference between files in the /Library folder and the /System/Library folder? i.e., files in the /Library folder are used how and when, and files in the /System/Library folder are used how and when?
[c]I did find three items in the Login Items window:
-AirPort Base Station Agent
-iTunesHelper ["Hide" checkbox is checked]
-Microsoft AU Daemon

Can anyone offer me any insight as to what these programs do (especially this Microsoft AU Daemon) and how essential it is that they be running?

Just out of curiosity, anybody know what iTunesHelper does??

thanks!
Mark

Bump* I would also like to know about Microsoft AU Daemon and iTunes Helper.

thx.

 

[richard.mac]

The System folder is essentially the system core of Mac OS X. nothing should be changed in here unless you know what youre doing. the Library folder is for all users and your home Library folder is just for your settings.

iTunes helper is always open to help iPhones and iPods open iTunes and sync automatically if you have this set. there are probably other many other uses for it.

the Microsoft AU Daemon is a probably a background process for Entourage. im not sure what it does but if you use Entourage leave it alone. if you want you can force quit it from Activity Monitor but it will re appear if you open Entourage again.

as you dont have many startup or login items its probably the boot caches that are slowing down your system. clear them and do a system spring by downloading Onyx and using the Automation feature (perfectly safe). then reboot about 4 times or until startup times become the same speed. the is how you know the system is cached properly.