New iMac is taking a full 3 minutes and 45 seconds to boot.

[jaypee68]

I got a new 24" aluminum iMac in July, and it has been an amazing machine ever since... until now. I turned it on tonight like I normally do but something wasn't right tonight. It normally takes less than a minute to boot up from power on, but tonight it's taking a full 3 minutes and 45 seconds. From power on, the grey screen with the Apple logo and the progress spinner, takes about 1.5 minutes of the boot time, the rest of the time is spent with a light blue screen showing with no cursor until the desktop shows itself.

I've disabled login items, run maintenance scripts, repaired permissions, unmounted and shutoff my TimeMachine backup drive, decluttered my desktop, and nothing seems to work. I've booted into safe boot, and that takes around 2 minutes and 25 seconds. Somethings not right here and I'm not sure where to start.

I didn't do anything different on my iMac last night before shutdown thatn I normally do. I haven't installed anything new in the last few days. I'm really not looking forward to a reinstall of the OS, so hopefully it's something stupid and easy.

Can anyone suggest something else I should be checking? Thank you.

P.S. Actually I did install something. I updated to the latest version of Delicious Library 2 last night. Version 2.0.5 (v10707)

 

[NRose8989]

Maybe Boot into single user mode and do a fsck -fy to check you disk.

 

[jaypee68]

Maybe Boot into single user mode and do a fsck -fy to check you disk.

Is that the same thing as Safe Boot?

 

[jaypee68]

nvm, I figured the single user boot, and did the fsck, and the OS says everything is cool with the HD, buuuuuuuuuutttttt... I'm getting a lot of the error...

USBF: xxx.xxx AppleUSBEHCI[0x6f80000]::Found a transaction past the completion deadline on bus 0xfa timing out! (Addr: 4, EP: 4)

So I assume something is wrong with a USB device. I unplugged a USB hub I had plugged in with my camera's USB cord as well as my Intuos 6x8, and my HP printer attached, and the errors stopped.

 

[jaypee68]

Mystery is solved! I had a quirky incident last night that I had totally forgot about until I saw the USB error in single user mode. I wanted to transfer some pics off of a memory stick duo. I popped the stick into my HP printer's card reader, and it had an issue showing me all of the pics that I knew were on the stick.

I took the stick out without unmounting it first and stuck it into my camera, and then attached the camera via USB through the hub. I got my pictures from the stick into iPhoto, did what I had to do, and unmounted the camera this time before disconnecting.

I still had a little drive icon on the desktop from the card reader on the printer even though nothing was in there, so I just tossed it into the trash. The iMac must have thought there was still a mount to deal with there, and must have been searching for it during boot time. I unplugged the USB hub and the iMac booted just like it usually does in about 30 seconds give or take. I reset the printer, and plugged the hub back in, and now everything is cool like the other side of the pillow.

Thanks NRose8989 for pointing me in the right direction with the single user mode, or I may have been frustrated for quite some time.