Resolved [OS X Yosemite] Late 2008 MacBook Pro - Extremely Slow Boot

[AppleGeek1127]

I just installed upgraded my Dad's Late 2008 MacBook Pro from OS X Mavericks to OS X Yosemite.

The installation went smoothly, but the first boot is taking absolutely forever.

The progress bar has been sitting at ~50% for the past 15 minutes. Should I just wait it out, or is something wrong?

 

[KALLT]

I just installed upgraded my Dad's Late 2008 MacBook Pro from OS X Mavericks to OS X Yosemite.

The installation went smoothly, but the first boot is taking absolutely forever.

The progress bar has been sitting at ~50% for the past 15 minutes. Should I just wait it out, or is something wrong?

Always better to just wait for a bit. Perhaps it does need that extra time to sort somethings out. It could also be a hard-drive failure, but no need to worry just yet.

 

[AppleGeek1127]

Always better to just wait for a bit. Perhaps it does need that extra time to sort somethings out. It could also be a hard-drive failure, but no need to worry just yet.

Still waiting for it to boot...

 

[ZVH]

You might want to try these and reboot again:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964

It sounds like your drive is stuck doing it's fsck OR it needs to be reset as described above. No, it isn't normal. Yosemite is known to be a slow boot on some systems, but slow usually means a minute or so, not an hour or so.

The drive might have been bad or be going bad and the installation just exposed it. An overview of bad hard drives and symptoms can be found here:

http://scsc-online.com/Bad Hard Drive Signs and Symptoms.html

but there is nothing Yosemite specific in those linked articles.

With luck one of the resets at the top will do the trick.

 

[Tony6411]

SSD Hard drive will breathe new life !

Buy a ssd hard drive from best buy or eBay you can get one cheaper now and it will increase your boot times to less then 20 seconds i have the same exact model and love it!!


http://www.bestbuy.com/site/pny-opt...ulti/8193026.p?id=1219315689843&skuId=8193026


This is what i installed!

 

[AppleGeek1127]

The MacBook finally booted after several hours. After completing the setup process with my Dad's Apple ID, it seems to be booting like normal. Also, the MacBook now has a 250GB Crucial BX100 SSD installed. Thanks everyone for your help.

 

[Taz Mangus]

The MacBook finally booted after several hours. After completing the setup process with my Dad's Apple ID, it seems to be booting like normal. Also, the MacBook now has a 250GB Crucial BX100 SSD installed. Thanks everyone for your help.

You are far more patient than me. I would not have wait several hours for the computer to have booted.