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Tiger starts slowly on my G5

uelef

uelef

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 7, 2004
58
1
Germany, Wuerzburg
I own a G5 (2.5 GHz dual) and a new PowerBook (1.67 MHz). If I compare the starting time of Mac OS X 10.4.2 (it was the same with 10.4.0 and 10.4.1) my G5 starts the OS much slower than my PowerBook - I would say the G5 needs more than twice, maybe three times as long until my finder and desktop is ready for use.

I don't understand what's wrong with it. First I thougt I had a made a mistake on installation - so I reinstalled Tiger on my G5. But the result is the same.

Comparing the time the G5 and the PowerBook need until the login window appears - it is almost the same (maybe the PowerBook is a few seconds faster), but after logging in as normal user the G5 needs so much time... I got a few apps that start automatically after logging in (SpamSieve, Adium X, iCal Alarm Scheduler etc.), but exept the Hotsync Manager for my Palm (ony G5), the same apps are started on the PB and the G5.

Does any-one have any suggestions what can be wrong with the described starting time difference? Is it Spotlight that slows down my G5 (because I'm using a 200 GB harddisk and a second 160 GB harddisk where Spotlight is turned off on my G5 - on my PB there is only a 80 GB harddisk)? Could it be a crippled font (they are not exactly the same on both Macs)? Or is this difference normal and other users do have the same experience?

Regards, Ulf
 
Only a guess, but it could be that you have so much stuff on the G5 over the PB... I know thats a fact for long start times in the PC world, not sure about Mac's...
BTW, update sig ;).
 
It isn't supposed to boot slowly, my 1.8 G5 boots very fast with 10.4.2, faster than it used to.
 
Do you have third-party USB peripherals plugged in while you boot? The longer boot times could be attributed to that.
 
Lacero said:
Do you have third-party USB peripherals plugged in while you boot? The longer boot times could be attributed to that.
Click to expand...

Well, I removed all USB peripherials (except the firewire and USB connector of my Studio Display) - but it did not change anything. I will try it later without the USB and firewire connector of the display...
 
uelef said:
Could it be a crippled font (they are not exactly the same on both Macs)? Or is this difference normal and other users do have the same experience?

Regards, Ulf
Click to expand...

A bad font or several bad fonts have caused havoc for me before on a G5. Took several minutes to get to the user screen. I dumped all but the fonts I know I use and it was fine after that. Definitely something to consider.

How long does the PB take to hit the user screen? Is the RAM comparable between the two? What are your hard drives spinning at? There's lots that could be making a difference. The amount you have on your hard drives could well be a factor. 360GB Vs 80GB is a lot, after all.

Since installing Tiger on Wednesday and upping the RAM this morning on my Powerbook, I'd say it now hits the user screen a fair bit quicker than my Panther G5 at work. The G5 has 80 + 160GB to get through. The PB, like yours, has only 80. Makes sense that it could be slower. The question is, how much, exactly? also, Spotlight shouldn't make too much of a difference as it doesn't index everything every time you log on?
 
Different amounts of RAM maybe? RAM helps startup quite a bit. Also, have you repaired permissions and done a disk repair lately? (on both machines)
 
Well, on my PowerBook I got 1,5 GB of RAM, on the G5 2,5 GB RAM. The different amount of RAM should not be responsible for the long start time of my G5.
The G5 has a faster CPU (two of them!), has faster harddisks (7200 rpm vs. 5200 in the PB, first SATA, second IDE) and should generally be much faster than the PB (frontside bus, better GPU etc.). But start time on the G5 is much slower.

I will try later to eliminate all fonts on the G5 that are not on the PowerBook and I will remove all USB and FW peripherials. I don't have any other suggestions.

Is there a way to get a log of what processes are active when Mac OS X 10.4 is starting?

Ulf
 
uelef said:
Well, on my PowerBook I got 1,5 GB of RAM, on the G5 2,5 GB RAM. The different amount of RAM should not be responsible for the long start time of my G5.
The G5 has a faster CPU (two of them!), has faster harddisks (7200 rpm vs. 5200 in the PB, first SATA, second IDE) and should generally be much faster than the PB (frontside bus, better GPU etc.). But start time on the G5 is much slower.

I will try later to eliminate all fonts on the G5 that are not on the PowerBook and I will remove all USB and FW peripherials. I don't have any other suggestions.

Ulf
Click to expand...

You're right - aside from the general hard disk size, the G5 should really load up at least as fast (but should be faster) than the Powerbook. From limited experience, I'd say look at the fonts first off but when I had my problem, we were talking literally hundreds of corrupt font files so unless you've recently added a specific font laden app or disk, it could be something else.
 
uelef said:
Well, on my PowerBook I got 1,5 GB of RAM, on the G5 2,5 GB RAM. The different amount of RAM should not be responsible for the long start time of my G5.
The G5 has a faster CPU (two of them!), has faster harddisks (7200 rpm vs. 5200 in the PB, first SATA, second IDE) and should generally be much faster than the PB (frontside bus, better GPU etc.). But start time on the G5 is much slower.

I will try later to eliminate all fonts on the G5 that are not on the PowerBook and I will remove all USB and FW peripherials. I don't have any other suggestions.

Is there a way to get a log of what processes are active when Mac OS X 10.4 is starting?

Ulf
Click to expand...

Is the RAM installed in pairs? ie 512 x4, 256 x 2? That's how I have my G5 and it starts up incredibily fast.
 
I checked out a few things:

First of all: Here's a comparison of the start times:
- time until the gray screen with the apple logo appears: 15 sec (PB), 23 sec (G5)
- time until login window appears: 37 sec (PB) vs. 46 sec. (G5
- time until the icons appear on the desktop: 15 sec (PB) vs. 40 sec (!!, G5)
The first two quoted times maybe are due to the RAM that is checked on launching Mac OS X, but the third time until the desktop appears should not be caused by the RAM. And that's why starting the G5 last that long.

The fonts are the same on both Macs. Automatically started apps on my user are the same on both Macs. The G5 has the RAM installed in pairs (2 x 256 MB, 2 x 512 MB and 2 x 512 MB - all RAM is certified for Macs.

And at last: I have not had this long time for startup with my G5 on Panther. So it should not be the RAM.

I also thougt it maybe could be the iDisk that is automatically launched on my G5. But removing this, did not help. Also removing all USB periphals did not change anything.

I really don't know what is wrong with my G5... Any more suggestions?

Ulf
 
Maybe the Console application in Application/Tools will give you some clues. I just had a look and found the following in the system.log.

"Jul 16 18:35:35 iMac /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/ATS.framework/Support/ATSServer: Serious problems were found in font data in file "/System/Library/Fonts/Arial Unicode.TTF"."
 
uelef said:
I really don't know what is wrong with my G5... Any more suggestions?

Ulf
Click to expand...

Um, re-install :eek: .

Just joking.

OK. I have an idea but forgive me if it's not the most technical route. Time to narrow the playing field. How much data do you have stored on each of the drives and are either of them external or capable of being disconnected easily?
 
AlBDamned said:
I have an idea but forgive me if it's not the most technical route. Time to narrow the playing field. How much data do you have stored on each of the drives and are either of them external or capable of being disconnected easily?
Click to expand...

HD 1 got 175 GB of 186, HD 2 136 of 148 GB. Both are internal and SATA drives.

Ulf
 
uelef said:
HD 1 got 175 GB of 186, HD 2 136 of 148 GB. Both are internal and SATA drives.

Ulf
Click to expand...


Screws that idea then. I was going to say: Dump everything onto one drive and disconnect it. Then start up. That way, if it is quicker, you can atrribute it to either something in one of the drives, or the sheer amount of dat.

However, given you have over 300 GB of data there, I think that may be your prime culprit. That is a hella lot of data to chug through every time you start your G5 up.

rickvanr's suggestion is a good one. Just don't turn it off. unless you're experiencing slow access times or are going away for a while, just leave it going.
 
AlBDamned said:
However, given you have over 300 GB of data there, I think that may be your prime culprit. That is a hella lot of data to chug through every time you start your G5 up.
rickvanr's suggestion is a good one. Just don't turn it off.
Click to expand...

If 300 GB of data slows down my G5 then something' s wrong with the OS or with the G5. Hey, man, it's one of the fastest computers out there... (Steve Jobs told us)

Not to turn it off is one solution for the problem - but not a really satisfying. I want to find out why the G5 is slower than my PB on startup. That should not happen...

Ulf
 
uelef said:
If 300 GB of data slows down my G5 then something' s wrong with the OS or with the G5. Hey, man, it's one of the fastest computers out there... (Steve Jobs told us)

Not to turn it off is one solution for the problem - but not a really satisfying. I want to find out why the G5 is slower than my PB on startup. That should not happen...

Ulf
Click to expand...

But you've said yourself, it's not slowing it down, tt just takes a longer than the Powerbook to start up. If your Powerbook is new, I'd assume you have about 30GB of HD used. That equates to just 10% of the data stored on your HD on your G5. It's bound to take a bit longer! If it's quick once you hit the user screen that would indicate there's nothing inherently wrong, other than a fair bit of data to get through at first.

Just seen this on another thread. Maybe try creating a new acccount with nothing in it (apps or data exclusive to your proper account) and see how long that takes to go from Log in.

Other than that, I'm all out of ideas and chicken soup theories.
 
Oh, my PowerBook is not that new. It stores more than 70 GB of data and got a 80 GB harddisk.

Ok, I'll give it up (besides someone can give me another hint) - but rare is nevertheless that with Panther startup time was much shorter on my G5!

Ulf
 
I started another inquiry:

I backuped my Macintosh HD onto a external FireWire 800 harddisk. And then something strange happens: If I use this FW disk as startup disk (the really have the same data) startup time is clearly reduced. It seems that the slow startup has to do with my SATA drive - although it is a very fast Western Digital drive (actually faster than the harddisk inside the FW enclosure).

Any ideas why using the internal SATA drive as startup disk is much slower than using the external FW 800 disk?
 
uelef said:
I started another inquiry:

I backuped my Macintosh HD onto a external FireWire 800 harddisk. And then something strange happens: If I use this FW disk as startup disk (the really have the same data) startup time is clearly reduced. It seems that the slow startup has to do with my SATA drive - although it is a very fast Western Digital drive (actually faster than the harddisk inside the FW enclosure).

Any ideas why using the internal SATA drive as startup disk is much slower than using the external FW 800 disk?
Click to expand...


Maybe try running a disk utility repair on the SATA disk? Or even an hardware test (on your original install disks) to see if there's anything wrong with the SATA.
 
uelef said:
I started another inquiry:

I backuped my Macintosh HD onto a external FireWire 800 harddisk. And then something strange happens: If I use this FW disk as startup disk (the really have the same data) startup time is clearly reduced. It seems that the slow startup has to do with my SATA drive - although it is a very fast Western Digital drive (actually faster than the harddisk inside the FW enclosure).

Any ideas why using the internal SATA drive as startup disk is much slower than using the external FW 800 disk?
Click to expand...


Don't have a clue why it would be doing this.

Maybe try running a disk utility repair on the SATA disk? Or even an hardware test (on your original install disks) to see if there's anything wrong with the SATA, or, even try completely erasing the SATA and starting afresh with it. That may be a bit drastic though given that it runs ok during normal use.



The fact that it starts up faster using the FW drive dispels the theory of the data clogging it up. That's good to know.
 
My G5 takes about 11 seconds to boot to the desktop after the Apple logo first appears, but I don't have any apps starting automatically. (That's Tiger; Panther took about 50% longer.)

However, 99% of the time, I just put it to sleep, so I don't really care about the boot time....

--Eric
 
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