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Slow startup

M

MacMan988

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 7, 2012
895
176
Hi, I have a late 2011 macbook pro and it takes about 1 minute to start up. It used to start up within about 26 seconds. There is one thing I have noticed that during the start up, after the Apple logo appears it takes about 30 seconds for the spinning wheel to appear under the Apple logo.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? How much would be the average startup time of this specific macbook pro with no SSD installed?

Thanks.
 
Try going to System Preferences and in the Startup Disk panel make sure your drive is selected as the boot drive. It sounds like maybe you changed this and the system is searching for a boot drive at startup.
 
Weaselboy said:
Try going to System Preferences and in the Startup Disk panel make sure your drive is selected as the boot drive. It sounds like maybe you changed this and the system is searching for a boot drive at startup.
Click to expand...

I used to have windows with bootcamp but now its removed. Only the Macintosh HD is listed in the Startup Disk panel and the two buttons named "Restart" and "Target Disk Mode..." is there. Could you please explain me how to do the necessary configurations? I can recall that this problem started to appear during the time I was using bootcamp.
 
MacMan988 said:
I used to have windows with bootcamp but now its removed. Only the Macintosh HD is listed in the Startup Disk panel and the two buttons named "Restart" and "Target Disk Mode..." is there. Could you please explain me how to do the necessary configurations? I can recall that this problem started to appear during the time I was using bootcamp.
Click to expand...

Just select (click) the only drive you see there and press "Restart".
 
Where are these configuration related to the Startup Volume stuff saved in? Are they in the EFI partition? If then is this partition getting re-created (or data being re-created) if I reinstall Lion?
 
Do you have any external USB drives plugged in? If so, unplug them completely and then try booting up. You'll notice a difference.
 
reemas said:
Do you have any external USB drives plugged in? If so, unplug them completely and then try booting up. You'll notice a difference.
Click to expand...

they are unplugged. still the result is the same. I thought of reinstalling Lion. But my question is does it re-create the EFI partition and the contents in it? What are the things a reinstallation would not change?
 
Download Onyx from macupdate.com (the lion version, not snow leopard). Run it and select the automation tab. Check 'execute maintenance scripts' and leave the others as they are. Click 'execute' and let it run. Reboot when it tells you to. This should fix anything that's wrong and interfering with boot times.
 
mac82 said:
Download Onyx from macupdate.com (the lion version, not snow leopard). Run it and select the automation tab. Check 'execute maintenance scripts' and leave the others as they are. Click 'execute' and let it run. Reboot when it tells you to. This should fix anything that's wrong and interfering with boot times.
Click to expand...

OnyX didn't fix the problem. I'm thinking of reinstalling the Lion. Can someone please tell me whether a reinstallation would re-create the content in the EFI partition?
 
blueroom said:
Anything on your desktop?
Click to expand...
blueroom said:
Check Parallels as it can be a resource hog.
Click to expand...
iisforiphone said:
do you have any apps set to open on startup?
Click to expand...
None of these things will affect the situation the OP described, as the delay occurs before even logging into any user account:
MacMan988 said:
There is one thing I have noticed that during the start up, after the Apple logo appears it takes about 30 seconds for the spinning wheel to appear under the Apple logo.
Click to expand...
I recommend reinstalling Mac OS X.
 
GGJstudios said:
None of these things will affect the situation the OP described, as the delay occurs before even logging into any user account:

I recommend reinstalling Mac OS X.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I will try reinstalling Mac OS
 
Reinstalling the OS is always a good way to speed things up. If you don't notice an improvement, use Disk Utility to verify the integrity of your hard drive - my current laptop's HDD failed once and one of the early symptoms was oddly slow startup times and random crashing when opening applications.

Something else you could do is to check Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchAgents and /LaunchDaemons. You might find some startup items there which aren't listed under System Preferences - Parallels is one which springs to mind, should you be happening to use it.
 
playsontheleft said:
Something else you could do is to check Macintosh HD/Library/LaunchAgents and /LaunchDaemons. You might find some startup items there which aren't listed under System Preferences - Parallels is one which springs to mind, should you be happening to use it.
Click to expand...
This won't help. Read post #17.
 
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