What's wrong with my late 2013 MBP 13?

[GTRagnarok]

For the past 4 months, it's been running fine but it's suddenly become problematic. It has a 512GB SSD and what was a few seconds boot is now 30 seconds. It stays on the white screen for about 25 seconds before the apple logo appears and the OS starts to boot. And most of the time when the OS boots and I'm at the desktop, the trackpad and keyboard doesn't work for another 30 seconds.

I've tried everything I could think of and Googled for including resetting the SMC, PRAM, and doing a clean install (erasing the SSD first with Disk Utility) of OS X Mavericks multiple times. It's also affecting my Boot Camp installations of Windows 8.1. It was fine before, but now every time I boot up Windows (still having to wait through the long white screen) there's an error message that says my previously connected USB device was not recognized. This happens even on completely fresh installs of OS X and Boot Camp Windows 8.1 with no devices attached, so it makes no sense to me.

Considering this persists even on reinstalls of the OS, I'm thinking it's a hardware issue? Do I have to take it to an Apple Store?

 

[DeltaMac]

...

Considering this persists even on reinstalls of the OS, I'm thinking it's a hardware issue? Do I have to take it to an Apple Store?

Have you tried your Diagnostics test?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5781

Note that there is two different methods to boot to that test. One uses your internet connection to load the test from Apple's servers. You would try that one if you can't get the local test to function.

 

[GTRagnarok]

Have you tried your Diagnostics test?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5781

Note that there is two different methods to boot to that test. One uses your internet connection to load the test from Apple's servers. You would try that one if you can't get the local test to function.

I just ran it, and it didn't find any issues

I noticed that after I reinstall a fresh copy of OS X, the first couple of boots are fast like normal. Then what I described above starts happening. It's baffling.

 

[marc55]

I'd be giving Apple Tech Support a call

 

[DeltaMac]

Have you checked for excessive CPU, or large chunks of memory in use?
Watch your Activity Monitor, particularly when the trackpad and keyboard seem to stop working.

Or, maybe it's time to take advantage of your warranty...

 

[GTRagnarok]

An update in case anyone finds this interesting. I took it to the Apple Store and, sure enough, it was a hardware failure. The symptoms I described were immediately apparent to the Apple Genius there. He hooked it up and ran a diagnostic which showed a logic board failure and the "SD Card" was missing

I left it there for a logic board replacement. A couple days later, they called me and said they needed to send it to a repair center. I agreed to that. A couple more days later, the repair center calls and tells me that they ran all their diagnostic tests and couldn't find anything. What...

They asked me to describe the problems, how to recreate it, etc., so I did. That was today, so more waiting now. I just can't wrap my head around this. You'd think the repair center would have way more advanced testing equipment. How the Apple Store can find the problem but not the repair center is beyond me.

 

[Jambalaya]

Thanks for sharing the update, keep us posted