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MBP took 15 secs till the initial chime sounded on start-up???

J

jon08

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 14, 2008
1,894
112
A couple of weeks ago I did a clean install (Leopard) on my 3-month-old Early '08 MBP and have replaced the previous Kingston 4GB ram with a brand new Crucial 4GB because the Kingston one appeared to be having some issues (which now I'm starting to believe that it didn't!!).

Anyway, just an hour ago I turned my MBP on and the fans etc started working, yet the screen remained black. It wasn't until about 15-20 secs later that the initial chime and the Apple logo showed up!! It bothers me, as I know this is not how it's supposed to be.

I haven't been too happy with the speed of this computer/hard drive for a while anyway. For example some times the "colored spinning ball" appears when opening certain apps, or several times an app hung. I've also experienced Firefox freeze when opening 20 tabs - I don't think this should happen on 4GB RAM!!

I wish this was merely the infamous "10.5.6 bug" that lotsa people complained about, but I'm not too sure if that's the case. What could be the problem? Possibly hard drive? Or what?
 
jon08 said:
A couple of weeks ago I did a clean install (Leopard) on my 3-month-old Early '08 MBP and have replaced the previous Kingston 4GB ram with a brand new Crucial 4GB because the Kingston one appeared to be having some issues (which now I'm starting to believe that it didn't!!).

Anyway, just an hour ago I turned my MBP on and the fans etc started working, yet the screen remained black. It wasn't until about 15-20 secs later that the initial chime and the Apple logo showed up!! It bothers me, as I know this is not how it's supposed to be.

I haven't been too happy with the speed of this computer/hard drive for a while anyway. For example some times the "colored spinning ball" appears when opening certain apps, or several times an app hung. I've also experienced Firefox freeze when opening 20 tabs - I don't think this should happen on 4GB RAM!!

I wish this was merely the infamous "10.5.6 bug" that lotsa people complained about, but I'm not too sure if that's the case. What could be the problem? Possibly hard drive? Or what?
Click to expand...

My MacBook has the same slow chime problem whenever the RAM is ever-so-slightly loose (I commute on a motorcycle with my MacBook, so it seems to happen once a month or so). Be sure that your new RAM is pushed in far enough. I'd suggest ejecting it and firmly reseating it.

As for your other problems, Firefox occasionally freezes because of its own problems, not necessarily because of how much RAM you have. Do you notice that the beachballs are consistent with certain programs? For instance I usually get a brief beachball when I start up MS Word 2008.
 
MarcBook said:
My MacBook Pro has done a similar thing on a couple of occasions before. It doesn't seem to be anything to worry about.

Perhaps running the UNIX scripts (using software like MacJanitor) and repairing permissions will help? Those are the routine tasks to perform when things start to play up.

http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html
Click to expand...

Hm, but I just did a clean install recently, why should I be repairing permissions tho?
 
khunsanook said:
My MacBook has the same slow chime problem whenever the RAM is ever-so-slightly loose (I commute on a motorcycle with my MacBook, so it seems to happen once a month or so). Be sure that your new RAM is pushed in far enough. I'd suggest ejecting it and firmly reseating it.

As for your other problems, Firefox occasionally freezes because of its own problems, not necessarily because of how much RAM you have. Do you notice that the beachballs are consistent with certain programs? For instance I usually get a brief beachball when I start up MS Word 2008.
Click to expand...

I believe I installed it firmly, I mean I pushed the ram firmly into their slots, however I didn't really use that much force to completely ram them inside the slots (no pun intended:D)... should I do that tho?
 
A personal friend of mine, who was an Apple genius and now is a Consultant tells me that ram is the "only thing with computers that he tells his customers to push until they feel like they're going to break it", basically push it forcefully.. My start up time has been growing longer and longer since I bought my computer despite having upgraded to 4 GB ram over the original 2 GB. Also my opening most programs takes way way way longer than I feel like it should :(
 
SecondDealer said:
My start up time has been growing longer and longer since I bought my computer despite having upgraded to 4 GB ram over the original 2 GB.
Click to expand...

But if you increase the ram memory you'll have to wait a bit longer till the os addresses all 4gigs installed at the start up.
 
Go start up a windows vista machine. Your computer will seem lightening fast!
 
Interesting... I've noticed the same thing since upgrading from 2GB to 3. I can't even put 4 in... laptop simply will not start. With 3 GB it often takes a while to get that chime but after that everything is fine. Sometimes on reboot however, I get no chime and a series of alarming "beeps". I'm going to count how many next time because apparently that has meaning...
 
ooninay said:
Interesting... I've noticed the same thing since upgrading from 2GB to 3. I can't even put 4 in... laptop simply will not start. With 3 GB it often takes a while to get that chime but after that everything is fine. Sometimes on reboot however, I get no chime and a series of alarming "beeps". I'm going to count how many next time because apparently that has meaning...
Click to expand...

here is a good thread to address your beep questions.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/671712/
 
so your hard drive is pretty much empty? Mine is kinda full (about 30 GB free (250GB drive) and i notice that when it gets down to about 7-10GB free, that it is really slow to boot. I also increased the RAM from 2GB to 4GB (crucial ram) and didnt really notice any decrease or increase in boot time.
 
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