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Speed up startup time...

Sincerely doubt it's possible to achieve 15s especially if you're using Leopard

Anyway, using 10.5.5 on my Macbook, I usually boot up in about 45s - 1min
 
Do you boot to the login screen (ie. have auto login off) or do you boot straight to your desktop?

If the second, you should take a look at your account's Login Items (Preferences/Accounts). See if there's anything there you can remove.
 
Oh man come on! I don't think it takes too much time!! It's not Windows!!

As said before, check your login items.

If you really hate waiting 1 minute then don't turn off your laptop. Put it to sleep. Lots of people do that(not me,i care for the environment!).
 
Adding a firewall, like little snitch and some other programs definitely add a little bit to the startup time. Just check which items are auto starting with OsX and see. If there is nothing there, then it's about as fast as your machine can startup. I have a MySql server starting up, Little Snitch etc. and I would say it takes about 30sec on a new MBP.
 
Habusho said:
Adding a firewall, like little snitch and some other programs definitely add a little bit to the startup time. Just check which items are auto starting with OsX and see. If there is nothing there, then it's about as fast as your machine can startup. I have a MySql server starting up, Little Snitch etc. and I would say it takes about 30sec on a new MBP.
Click to expand...

Also, if you have a lot of files or folders on your desktop it takes longer to start up too.
 
I checked the login items and erase the itune helper... I don't see how that helps me anyway!!!
 
seriously do this. written by me and based on information gathered on the internets.

1. Boot into secondary system
2. Remove all caches from
~/Library/Caches​
/Library/Caches​
/System/Library/Caches​
/private/var/folders/fg/fgP3NCUOFimx9A+Njvxp5E+++TI/-Caches-/ (directory may differ and does not apply to Tiger and below)​
3. Remove sleep image and swap file/s
/private/var/vm​
4. Repair Permissions and Disk
5. Boot into secondary system
6. iDefrag Full Defrag (defrags system without caches)
7. Boot into main system
8. Force pre-binding (only do this after removing application caches)
Code: 
sudo update_prebinding -root / -force
9. Cache all applications (open everything)
10. Reboot main system until OS is cached (4 times or so until stop seeing boot time improvements)
11. Boot into secondary system
12. Repair Permissions and Disk
13. iDefrag Optimize (defrags caches and vm)
14. Boot system again

if you dont have iDefrag just ignore those steps and if you dont have a secondary system use Terminal on the install disc. if you dont feel comforatble in Terminal or know how to remove files using Unix use a maintenance application to remove caches (probably easier).

my boot time in Leopard diminished by 20 seconds by doing this and application and data access time were shortened.
 
Re the above.

If you find that the full defrags are taking too long you may find that cloning with CCC or SuperDuper! to an external drive, formatting the internal and cloning back is quicker. This should have pretty much the same effect as a defrag as the clone back will write the files onto a blank disk so no fragmentation.

It is work saying that, in general, HFS+ disks shouldn't need defragging.
 
I never shut down my Mac, only when an update requires it or a big crash.

I just let it sleep, it is very efficient and wakes from sleep instantly.
 
I'm at ~17 seconds up to the login screen on a MBP 2.4 GHz IC2D w/ 4GB RAM. Have not yet tried optimizations described above.

This MBP had Tiger pre-installed, then I upgraded to Leopard from the day of release and have been upgrading incrementally to 10.5.5 and have (un)installed countless apps in between...

I don't have any major complaints. The machines feels fast, but if I'm ever home on a rainy day, I might do a fresh install of Leopard, then go straight to the latest software. Has anyone done this and noticed a (significant) difference?

I would then retrieve my files and settings from a Time Machine backup; however, doing a full restore from Time Machine seems like it could bring back some of the artifacts that I would be trying to eliminate.

The only noticeable quirk that comes to mind is in my user account. Sometimes after login the menu bar has no background for a few seconds or until I launch a Finder window or an app (anything that makes it refresh).
 
clone your Mac onto an external hard drive using Carbon Copy Cloner and then boot into it by holding option on startup. or if you dont have an external drive you can make a boot CD with iDefrag which you can boot into the same way.
 
It looks to me like:

1. Boot into secondary system
2. Remove all caches from

^ could also be done from primary system with "rm -f", then reboot, or put cache files in the trash and force empty or empty after rebooting.

11. Boot into secondary system
12. Repair Permissions and Disk

^ could also be done by booting the OS X Install CD, then run Disk Utility from the CD

I never used iDefrag, aside from that it looks possible to perform other steps without a secondary system.

While at it, I would also boot into single-user mode to run fsck.

Kilamite said:
I never shut down my Mac, only when an update requires it or a big crash.

I just let it sleep, it is very efficient and wakes from sleep instantly.
Click to expand...
Same here, but I do not recall having a single system crash on Leopard.
 
macrem said:
It looks to me like:

1. Boot into secondary system
2. Remove all caches from

^ could also be done from primary system with "rm -f", then reboot, or put cache files in the trash and force empty or empty after rebooting.

11. Boot into secondary system
12. Repair Permissions and Disk

^ could also be done by booting the OS X Install CD, then run Disk Utility from the CD

I never used iDefrag, aside from that it looks possible to perform other steps without a secondary system.

While at it, I would also boot into single-user mode to run fsck.
Click to expand...


OK.

However, I thought that booting from the restore CD and running Repair Permission on the Macintosh HD from Disk Utility there wasn't recommended because it will implement "out-dated" permissions.
I remember reading this long ago. Is there any truth to it?
 
RichardF said:
OK.

However, I thought that booting from the restore CD and running Repair Permission on the Macintosh HD from Disk Utility there wasn't recommended because it will implement "out-dated" permissions.
I remember reading this long ago. Is there any truth to it?
Click to expand...
Good point. Disk Utility's permissions db on the original Leopard CD, for ex., is definitely outdated. I'm not sure if/how it handles updates.
 
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