Status bar on start up stutters before fully loading.

[sface]

This is happening on my Macbook Pro 2017 15" that I have been using for 3 days (it came like this). It begins loading, then disappears, then suddenly shows up again and continues loading until it starts up.

I did an extensive site search and didn't find anything on this particular issue (maybe I'm typing the incorrect search words). I noticed it on my 2015 as well but it suddenly stopped happening at some point. Is anyone else experiencing this or know what it represents?

15 second video showing the issue:

 

[sface]

No one has an idea what this is or has ever had it happen before? I am beginning to worry it is a sign of something having been loaded onto the computer before I received it.

 

[DeltaMac]

I was concerned about the advert that appears in your video, until I realized it was not a part of your screen recording.
It's a pause of some kind of the boot.
Probably nothing.

If you have any concerns, why not just wipe the drive, and reinstall from your recovery partition?
Or, erase completely by booting to internet recovery, and reinstall the system from there.
Restore from your backup.

I should note that I always do that with any new Mac, well, since I started using Macs. I have purchased about 10 new Macs in 25 years, plus maybe a 12 or 15 (lost count!) used Macs, and always wipe the original drive straight out of the box. I don't remember why originally, but I did have an early one with a corrupted image on the factory drive --- just a habit of mine to wipe a new drive before any restores.

If you don't care to wipe the drive, you can certainly try a couple of software tools that can help you decide if you need to do more: Download and run EtreCheck (checks for questionable startup apps and files), then Malwarebytes (scans for, well, malware)

 

[sface]

Man, I had no idea that advert was even showing up (I removed it). Thanks for the suggestion. Was hoping someone knew what the pause might mean without having to wipe the drive since I've spent 30 hours setting the computer up, but I hear ya.

 

[DeltaMac]

Pause means, well, "pause"
May mean nothing more than a normal boot for your particular hardware/software configuration.

You could try a verbose boot (restart, holding Command-V) which will boot while listing your boot processes as they load.
That's something that you can use when the boot stops/freezes, and doesn't complete, or takes an usually long time to boot.
Although, your boot doesn't actually stop, just a short "break", then completes.

Still --- EtreCheck, and Malwarebytes are good tools that can help you decide if you are having an issue - or not!

Any actual problems with any apps that you use? or other questions?