Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Why is OS X taking sooooooo long to load??

B

btcomm

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 18, 2006
172
2
It was booting up just fine. I had other issues so I did an archive and install. Then I did the 10.2.8 update and now it takes over 2 minutes with the spinning wheel on the gray screen to start up.

Why?? This is so frustrating it wasn't taking this long before and now when you finally get to load the OS it seems like it's ok but why does it take so long to start where it did not before?
 
two cases i knew when OSX takes longer time to start
1. after u clean up system cache
2. you have a disk error, need to repair disk
 
What do you mean by 1. after u clean up system cache?

If that was the case would it continue to to boot slowly? Are you saying that after you clean the system cache this would happen or it boots slowly because you should clean the system cache?
 
btcomm said:
What do you mean by 1. after u clean up system cache?

If that was the case would it continue to to boot slowly? Are you saying that after you clean the system cache this would happen or it boots slowly because you should clean the system cache?
Click to expand...

after u clean the system cache (through system maintaining softwares like onyX), first or even 2nd time u boot the machine, it would be slow;

but if your disk need reparation, it would be slow no matter how many times u restart it.
 
Well, it has been a couple of times it's still booting slow.


I checked the disk and it says that the volume appears to be ok.

What else might be causing this??? One thing I'm trying to do is repair disk permissions.

It says it corrected permissions on .

It's down to the final little sliver left on the progress bar, I can hear the HD doing something but how long should it take on 10.2.8? 1/2 hour? an hour? How long is too long and if I don't have errors on the HD why is it taking forever to finish?
 
btcomm said:
It's down to the final little sliver left on the progress bar, I can hear the HD doing something but how long should it take on 10.2.8? 1/2 hour? an hour? How long is too long and if I don't have errors on the HD why is it taking forever to finish?
Click to expand...

Do you mean 10.4.8? Or are you actually still on 10.2.8?
 
I think I had a similar problem earlier this month. Try going to system preferences - startup disk select your OS X boot disk and restart. That did it for me. Hope it helps.
 
I remember my computers that used 10.2.8 booted very slow as well. As soon as I installed Tiger they booted much faster.
 
Things to consider.

btcomm said:
10.2.8
Click to expand...

Previous to 10.4 OS X was not very good at self maintenance. Long boot-times are indicative of any or all of the following:

1. Permissions in need of fixing.

2. Disk or directory dammage.

3. System level maintenance still outstanding.

4. secondary device/volume with any of the above issues present in such a manner that they are relevant to the booting system in question.

Troubleshooting proceedure:

(Note: If your HDD is in poor shape physically or your directories are dammaged beyond the point that Disk Utility can recover, any of these proceedures may push your system over the edge... Then again, so would nearly any use of your machine, beyond a certain point it becomes roulette)

1: Restart or cold boot holding down the shift key. THis forces your Mac into a self-diagnostic mode. Continue to hold the shift key until you get a "safe-boot" login. This may take a VERY long time so think about wedging or taping the key down (you may want to practice with the machine off). This proceedure will run a permissions fix and eventually a disk diagnostic/repair. Once you're in "safe boot" go ahead and restart again.

2: "Get Info" on the boot disk and run a fresh indexing. This also will take some time so you can geton with #3 while it's running.

3: Open the Terminal and type the following precisely:

sudo sh /etc/daily/

*the system will propt you for an admin password, enter it and hit return, it will not display what you type so don't be phased when it doesn't.*

when the operation finnishes follow up with:

sudo sh /etc/monthly/

and finally (takes the longest):

sudo sh /etc/weekly/


These actions clear out a number of OS level caches that can get overfull if your machine doesn't run for extended periods idle and NOT asleep, particularly if it does not sit idle over night.

4. Open your User control pane in System Prefs and shut off any login items.


If none of this helps you may well need Disk Warrior or one of Alofts excellent disk tools, you may also benefit from a restore-install.

Things to know about the future:

Even though Migration is technically supported from OS 10.2.8 upwards the Intel machines do not reliably interface with User Accounts present in pre-OS 10.4 systems. I migrate data several times a week for customers and the older your OS is the less reliable migration becomes. Some have speculated that this is due to hardware limitations of older FW machines but my experiences suggest it is more directly linked to the generation of the OS present in the previous system.

Good luck!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back