Macbook pro takes two and a half hours to start

[Xander562]

That's normal, don't worry about it.
Kidding, of course. Get that checked out by a genius.

 

[stafh]

I would say 99% certain it's a failing HDD - it could be a faulty sector that's taking an age to read and stopping the machine starting up properly: The boot process won't continue until the drive has reported it is ready, even if booting from an optical drive.
Try this: Get the machine in a quiet room and power it on. Listen very, very carefully to the machine (put your ear on or very close to the chassis) - if you hear a click, click, click sound then it's the Hard drive

It clicks a little the first few seconds, then it just sounds like a normal idle HD.

Is there any way to be sure that it is the hard drive? Without swapping HDs that is... i don't exactly have any spare discs lying around.

I almost don't think it's a failing hard drive.

Have you taken out whatever disc is in the drive? Does it take forever with no optical disc inside?

Boot in verbose mode (command + V held at startup) to see where it hangs at for so long.

Don't really see how that would help... i tried doing that once but as i have mentioned before, the computer hangs before the actual OS boots. It takes 2.5 hours before anything at all appears on the screen.

 

[kolax]

It clicks a little the first few seconds, then it just sounds like a normal idle HD.

Is there any way to be sure that it is the hard drive? Without swapping HDs that is... i don't exactly have any spare discs lying around.

Do you have any other Mac's in the house? Or a friend who uses a Mac? If so, you could try Target Disk Mode and see how well the hard drive responds.

Definitely back up your stuff if you haven't already, and prepare for the worst.

 

[DaveTheGrey]

Install os x on an external drive and boot it up. If it's faster than your internal then you know what causes your problems!

 

[stafh]

Do you have any other Mac's in the house? Or a friend who uses a Mac? If so, you could try Target Disk Mode and see how well the hard drive responds.

Definitely back up your stuff if you haven't already, and prepare for the worst.

Actually, the other day it broke even more. After the customary 2.5 hours, the apple would show up and the wheel would spin for a few seconds, and then it would shut off without warning. I ran the disc utility from the DVD and it said that the HD had some errors. After i erased and formated the drive, the disc utility said that the drive was functional, and after i installed OS X the computer would boot up normally again (apart from the 2.5 hours).

When this happened, i did a backup of some important stuff onto my external hard drive via a friends macbook pro (through target disc mode). My friends macbook complained and said that my hard drive had errors, but those errors were fixed later when i formated the drive. I have run tests in the disc utility after I formated, and it doesn't find any errors.

 

[goinskiing]

My first guess is that it is the HD. Sometimes all it takes is a few bad sectors in the right places to get things royally messed up and quick.

Could possibly be logic board.

If nothing else, I'm certain it's hardware failure, most likely the HD itself. I would definitely try the recommendations given to try to boot from a separate disk.

There is a chance it could be memory. Every HD failure I've had has come paired with a bad stick of RAM (at least in PC-land).

Hope you get it figured out.

 

[Sirus2400]

When this happened, i did a backup of some important stuff onto my external hard drive via a friends macbook pro (through target disc mode). My friends macbook complained and said that my hard drive had errors, but those errors were fixed later when i formated the drive. I have run tests in the disc utility after I formated, and it doesn't find any errors.

Could you boot your friends MBP in target mode then boot yours from his HD?

 

[a456]

Unfortunately the warranty ran out about a year ago :/

Even so, they might be able to help in some way, and as it's a relatively new machine if it is a manufacturing fault then they may be some comeback.

 

[macintel007]

I have the same issue with my MBP

To make a story short, all that "unfortunate" issue happend when I installed Leopard...

It become impossible to restart (the computer just restart with blank screen and the glowing led on the front). I did not have the patience to wait 2.5 hours but I let the computer off for about 2 hours in a cold area and then I was able to turn on the machine like nothing happend.

I don't think it's a hardware issue but mostly a software one and most of it a firmware issue.

I can't wait for Snow Leopard...

 

[stafh]

I have now changed the hard drive, the wlan card, unplugged the dvd-unit, changed keyboard/mousepad, RAM etc (a friend of mine has a macbook pro that we used to swap between). Nothing worked. We even tried starting his macbook with my hard drive, which worked fine.

I guess the main logic board is busted

The only thing left that i can think of is that my CPU runs hot... around 80 degrees celsius when idle. I don't think this is dangerously hot, but could it have anything to do with the unusual booting behaviour?

 

[e12a]

sorry to hear that.

yea a fried proc/logic board can cause some strange booting issues from what i've seen working with PowerMac G4s.