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TICKET ARCHIVE -> My Mac takes forever to start up
kelrodin - Jun 20, 2006 - 9:02 am
In this case, 'forever' really means anywhere between two minutes to about an hour. OSX itself starts perfectly fine, however. Here's the general scenerio:
-My computer is either asleep or off; it doesn't seem to matter which.
-I turn it on/wake it up.
-The power lights turn on, the fans start whirring, and the hard drives spin up, but my screen doesn't show anything. It just sits in its power save mode, which seems to show me it's not getting any sort of signal from the Mac.
-After a seemingly random amount of time, the screen will click to life and the Mac will start displaying the standard OSX startup sequence (Grey apple, blue loading screen, login window)
-From this time until I turn my Mac off/put it to sleep again, everything runs flawlessly. The amount of time the Mac is off/asleep doesn't seem to matter.
It's been doing this for a few months, but it never bothered me since up at college, my uptime was measured in weeks. Now home for the summer, I don't have the luxury of an always-on computer.
-My computer is either asleep or off; it doesn't seem to matter which.
-I turn it on/wake it up.
-The power lights turn on, the fans start whirring, and the hard drives spin up, but my screen doesn't show anything. It just sits in its power save mode, which seems to show me it's not getting any sort of signal from the Mac.
-After a seemingly random amount of time, the screen will click to life and the Mac will start displaying the standard OSX startup sequence (Grey apple, blue loading screen, login window)
-From this time until I turn my Mac off/put it to sleep again, everything runs flawlessly. The amount of time the Mac is off/asleep doesn't seem to matter.
It's been doing this for a few months, but it never bothered me since up at college, my uptime was measured in weeks. Now home for the summer, I don't have the luxury of an always-on computer.
Thunderthud - Jun 20, 2006 - 11:06 am
Now that you're home and your Mac isn't on 24/7 it's possible that your hard drive needs to be cleaned up. A lot of stuff accumulates in logs and such because of OS X's UNIX underpinnings.
Try a tool like MacPilot
www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/20937
to look in the various logs to see if there's a hint about trouble that an app may be having.
If left on long enough OS X will run tasks, usually in the wee hours, to clean up after itself but sometimes, especially laptops, the machines are not running when these tasks are scheduled to run and, sometimes, the logs are full of messages that some app is having continuing problems. If you don't like the idea of leaving the machine on overnight follow this link
www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10491
and download MacJanitor. Have it run the cleanup tasks periodically.
It also wouldn't hurt to perform some periodic maintenance on your hard drive. Once a month or so, or before each installation or update, boot your Mac from the install disc by putting it (Install Disk #1) into the drive and starting up while holding down the “C” key on the keyboard.
Once the machine is booted go to the Utilities menu and click on Disk Utility.
In the window that opens you will see the name of your hard drive in the list on the left side of the window. Click on it.
At the bottom right of the window you will see a button that says “Repair Drive”. Click on it. Repeat this as many times as it takes until no errors are reported.
Next, Quit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu.
Once you are restarted normally find Disk Utility in the Applications:Utilities folder and double-click on it.
Select your hard drive in the left column and click on the Repair Permissions button at the bottom left of the window. When Disk Utility is done Quit it .
Try a tool like MacPilot
www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/20937
to look in the various logs to see if there's a hint about trouble that an app may be having.
If left on long enough OS X will run tasks, usually in the wee hours, to clean up after itself but sometimes, especially laptops, the machines are not running when these tasks are scheduled to run and, sometimes, the logs are full of messages that some app is having continuing problems. If you don't like the idea of leaving the machine on overnight follow this link
www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10491
and download MacJanitor. Have it run the cleanup tasks periodically.
It also wouldn't hurt to perform some periodic maintenance on your hard drive. Once a month or so, or before each installation or update, boot your Mac from the install disc by putting it (Install Disk #1) into the drive and starting up while holding down the “C” key on the keyboard.
Once the machine is booted go to the Utilities menu and click on Disk Utility.
In the window that opens you will see the name of your hard drive in the list on the left side of the window. Click on it.
At the bottom right of the window you will see a button that says “Repair Drive”. Click on it. Repeat this as many times as it takes until no errors are reported.
Next, Quit Disk Utility and select Restart from the Apple menu.
Once you are restarted normally find Disk Utility in the Applications:Utilities folder and double-click on it.
Select your hard drive in the left column and click on the Repair Permissions button at the bottom left of the window. When Disk Utility is done Quit it .
kelrodin - Jun 20, 2006 - 3:33 pm
Thanks! I hadn't considered a backlog of log files, and once I cleaned a bunch of those out, everything seems to be running smoothly.
kelrodin - Jun 20, 2006 - 4:29 pm
Hmm, looks like it was a temporary fix, if any. It's back to its old behavior.
philippe99 - Jun 21, 2006 - 1:06 am
Hi.
I see in your profile you run an USB modem.
Could you unplug it while the Mac off and repower the mac to see if same symptoma still occur ?
Regards
Philippe
I see in your profile you run an USB modem.
Could you unplug it while the Mac off and repower the mac to see if same symptoma still occur ?
Regards
Philippe
kelrodin - Jun 26, 2006 - 8:16 am
I've tried removing everything that didn't come stock with the computer, with the exception of my three extra hard drives, but the problem persists.
kelrodin - Jun 27, 2006 - 3:50 pm
In the process of changing things around, I moved my two PCI USB cards to different slots, and haven't had any trouble yet.
If this was the cause, what made it happen?
If this was the cause, what made it happen?
ishan - Jun 29, 2006 - 9:10 pm
It could be that one or more of your slots went bad (I don't know what kind of Mac you have). The more likely explanation is what's been widely reported (check macfixit.com and xlr8yourmac.com) of Macintosh computers having problems with PCI USB and/or FW cards. A number of third party cards either don't work, cause the Mac to hang or cause kernel panics. I usually buy what's available at OWC (macsales.com) because they're pretty savvy, but there's plenty of other reliable Mac online vendors out there.
HTH and please let us know what happens. Thanks.
HTH and please let us know what happens. Thanks.
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