Weird Startup Please Help

[ytry2bsafe]

Looking for some advise

When I turned on my machine today and the white screen with the apple logo came up, instead of the normal spinning icon there was a progress bar displayed and the machine took about 2 minutes to start. When the machine finally started it was very slow and spotlight had to index the HDD. There was also significant screen tearing when moving the mouse over the dock. It was shutdown normally the day before (I selected shutdown from the apple menu). There were no updates installed when the machine was shutdown the night before.

When I restarted the machine everything appears to be normal, except Spotlight had to index the HDD. As some one new to the mac is this a sign of HDD problems or something else's. The machine was bought less than 3 weeks ago. Is there some kind of diagnostic utility that I can run?

Specs:
27 Inch iMac (Mid 2011)
Core i5
12 RAM
Radeon 6970 1GB RAM
Lion 10.7.3

 

[Razorhog]

Probably the OS running a repair - did it happen again on the next boot?

 

[Set845]

The same thing happened to me about a week ago, just as you describe. I didn't notice Spotlight indexing, though it may have. I have a mid 2011 iMac 27 3.4GHz, bought it in late October. It wasn't running hot at the time and a reboot fixed it. Its been running fine since. Sorry I don't know what happened either.

 

[Razorhog]

Look at this page, is this what it looked like?

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/12/16/why-is-there-a-progress-bar-when-my-mac-is-starting-up/

 

[Set845]

Yeah I got the progress bar. It didn't take twenty minutes to boot, it took a few though.

 

[ytry2bsafe]

Look at this page, is this what it looked like?

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/12/16/why-is-there-a-progress-bar-when-my-mac-is-starting-up/

This is exactly what appears to have happened thank you and everyone for the replies. I feel much better about what happened.

 

[Razorhog]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Although this is a perfect time to make sure you have a good backup plan in place.

 

[Set845]

Thanks a lot.

 

[ezramoore]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Although this is a perfect time to make sure you have a good backup plan in place.

I would worry about it, even on a 2011 machine. Time for a good backup and then disk diagnostics.