Dock missing after reboot for 5 Min. and more

[Zurichvito]

Hi, using a new retina MacBook 2016 with 10.11.5/El Capitan I experience very slow boots and the dock does not show up for 5 and more minutes. Very annoying. - Any ideas how to fix this? My 2011 MBAir has no such problems and boots fairly quickly ...
I can start applications via Spotlight. Still, dock does not appear. Furthermore I cannot switch between the apps by cmd-Tab ...

Thanks, Zurichvito

 

[JohnDS]

The first thing to do is to boot into Recovery Mode by booting while holding down Command-R, then go to disk utility and First Aid. Click on Macintosh HD on the left and run Repair Disk. Then run Repair Permissions. See if that solves the problem.

 

[Zurichvito]

Thank you, John DS - I did run first aid, there were some reapirs (i could not repair permissions separately - did not find that ...). Helps a lot: Booting is a bit more than one minute until the dock shows up - which is a great improvement! It does no longer remind me of the bad old days of MS-DOS booting from a 5 1/4'' floppy with an Intel 8086 processor back in the eighties, when you could go fetch a coffee or smoke a cigarette ... It feels more like the booting with the Intel 80286 ;-).

No I am serious: thank you, that was a big help - if you have any other such good ideas: you are very welcome. ..

 

[BrianBaughn]

Still it's not as quick as it should be. To determine whether it's a system-wide issue or just limited to your User Account, create a new User Account and compare what happens during the startup of the two accounts.

 

[Zurichvito]

Thank you, BrianBaughn. Tried that: 5 seconds for the new user; over a minute still for the old user ... no system wide issue, then. I move over to the new user. Thanks again!

 

[JohnDS]

It is probably an incompatible startup item in the old user. You can log in under the old user, then in Users and Groups preference pane, click on the lock at the bottom left to unlock it and go to the Logon Items tab. Highlight an item and click the minus button to delete it (don't just uncheck it). Repeat until you have deleted all items. Restart and see if that solves the problem.

There may be additional log on items which can be found in Finder in:

~/library/Startup Items

and

/library/Startups

 

[Weaselboy]

Thank you, BrianBaughn. Tried that: 5 seconds for the new user; over a minute still for the old user ... no system wide issue, then. I move over to the new user. Thanks again!

Sounds like something launching under the old account causing this then. Look in the old account in System Prefs under Users & Groups for login items to remove, then also look in this user folder for any launch agents. You need to be logged in to the old account and select the line below and right click... then in the Services menu click Reveal in Finder... and the folder will open for you.

~/Library/LaunchAgents

(~ is your users fodler)