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Ridiculous SR MBP Boot Times?

X

Xquizit

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 13, 2007
54
0
Ever since Apple released the updates for the new SR MBPs (the nVidia updates) and the 10.4.10 update along with the Audio Fix, my boot times have been RIDICULOUS.. I remember when I first got it, I would probably be loaded into OS X within a minute..

Now when I start it up, it takes 45 seconds just for the apple logo to show up, and then after that it takes another 30 seconds to get to the password screen. once I put in my password, it takes another 20-30 seconds to load everything.. In total it takes about 1 minute 45 seconds to boot up from a cold start.. same with a hot restart as well..

It definitely is happening well after I have installed the updates, and I don't have any extra start-up items except SteerMouse. I also haven't installed much on the computer except for like 2 games and a couple of additional programs..

What are you other SR MBP users getting on boot times?
 
mine takes forever too, but i have nothing to compare it to other than an imac core duo

but my brand new mbp takes forever to boot
 
I also just cleared the cache, no luck with that either. and I have nothing in the Startup Items folder..

am I just being paranoid or did I see someone say their SR MBP started up in 30 seconds?
 
Have you tried "Repair Disk Permissions" then "Deep Clean" using MainMenu (free software from Apples site), I find with my c/solo mini that that speeds up boot times, but with only 512MB RAM it doesn't take more than about 40 secs to start up.

Sounds concerning...
 
Verifying the disk was one of the first things I did when I noticed the sluggish boot times. It was already verfied and it didn't require a repair.

I also found someone saying that resetting the PRAM might help, and it actually proved to shave off roughly 20 seconds, but overall its still takin longer than before.. Should I just backup my data, and do a fresh OS X install? There isn't anything major that I've done with this MBP except for install the software updates.
 
Xquizit said:
I also just cleared the cache, no luck with that either. and I have nothing in the Startup Items folder..

am I just being paranoid or did I see someone say their SR MBP started up in 30 seconds?
Click to expand...

lol my CD mbp startsup in 30seconds. definately summin fishy going on there
 
DoFoT9 said:
30seconds for me.... its a very nice machine : i love it, not using 10.4.10 yet too scared

he said he has all the updates, thats what started it all.. maybe if he could downgrade to 10.4.9??
Click to expand...

lol im one who started the thread.. problems definitely started after 10.4.10 was installed...
 
Make sure, if you have bootcamp installed, that your mac hd is the default startup disk. If not, it will search for a bit before selecting your mac to boot. Go to sys prefs and go to start up disk and reboot as mac hd.
 
I have Bootcamp installed, but I haven't got around to putting Windows on here yet, so the default is the Mac HD..

After doing couple of optimizations I googled, I just did an online timer with my PC while I booted up the MBP and it took 54.9 seconds from off to desktop.. should I still be concerned you think?

I'm thinking dom7 might be getting 27 seconds because of the 7200rpm HD, but I would think 5400rpm would add like 10 seconds max..
 
I have all the latest updates and usually get around 26 seconds. I guess you might just want to do a fresh install if you haven't already set everything up and installed a lot of programs. Better to do it now than later. Over a minute definitely seems too long. Hope everything works out for you.
 
i had bad (longer - i'm not sure exactly the time, but possibly similar to your minute boot) load times too after the updates and resetting pram (trying to resolve kernel panic-airport-battery issue [related probably to 2wire routers]).

then I installed quite a bit of fonts (8000), and that REALLY screwed me over. So I got font doctor and fontexplorer - with fontdoctor I checked that none of my fonts were duplicates or messed up, with fontexplorer I did the same (to a lesser degree), and also reset my fonts to only system fonts aka "clean system fonts folders" (it moved all old fonts to a folder on desktop and removed them from my library - I chose to do that instead of manually deactivating fonts to save time, and to play it safe). Then, after the mandatory reboot and cleaning of the font cache, I reimported the fonts into my fontexplorer library, but didn't activate them, choosing instead to use fontexplorer to scroll through my collection and activate when necessary. Also, after doing all that, using fontexplorer, I again refreshed system fonts, cleaned system fonts cache, cleaned application fonts cache, and optimized my database.

I have all the updates fyi, and my boot up is now 22 seconds flat the last time I timed it (at the very longest, on normal use, wihout any wierd things [i.e. update, cleaning cache, etc.] prior to boot, etc. 30 sec. for sure.... though i am fairly sure i'm hitting 22 sec. consistently). I also have a bootcamp partition and a lot of editing (video, print, audio, web, you name it) software installed if that matters.

Also be forewarned that the first cleaning of all those caches etc. 'could' effect your very first bootup afterwards, so try restarting again if it does, and then again once more to be sure; I didn't experience this, but I have heard i could happen. if it is still slow then something else is wrong.

also, even if you haven't installed ANY new fonts, be aware that neither did I - and i still experienced the slow bootup after the updates and reset of pram. only when I did install the fonts, which, in turn, caused an even MORE drasic slowdown (in more respects than just osx bootup), was I forced to take proactive action.

font explorer x is free from linotype. fontdoctor is not free.... I'm not sure if fontdoctor is necessary, but I had it and i used it.... and everything seems to be okay for me.

good luck.
 
I noticed the grey screen stayed like that for ages too...but I rarely notice it since I don't turn my laptop off that much, I just let it sleep.

My 2nd gen C2D never took that long to boot up - but I never got round to putting 10.4.10 on it before I took it back for my SR C2D.

I think I'll try repairing disk permissions etc and see if that helps.
 
quik said:
19 seconds here.
Click to expand...

I wish I could see times like that! I'm with the first guy, but probably not nearly as bad off.

It's maybe about 10-20 seconds of gray, about 20-30 of the apple, about 5-10 on the loading os-x page, then about another 30 until everything is ready to go. The only program I have launching when I start it up is quicksilver, and that is taking a long time these days.

It used to (even as late as Wednesday) only take quicksilver about 5 seconds to load. The QS would spin out and then fade away. Now it comes spinning out and sits there about 10-15 seconds before fading out. It started acting sluggish on Wednesday when I did the latest updates. I'm not so certain it was slow right after updating (because it's always a bit sluggish after updating while it installs stuff), but after I updated I was playing around on the machine and it froze on me and I had to hold the power button down to get it to do anything. After that (which was the second reboot after updating) I noticed it was really slow.

So, my question is, how do I clean the cache and PRAM and stuff? Sorry for the questions, the answers are probably obvious. Thanks though!
 
PRAM is what stores system configuration, date and time etc so I wouldn't recommend "cleaning it up."

But, apparently, this is the key combo if do you wish to do it:

Apple + Option + P + R (hold down during startup).
 
Thanks for the tip - don't think I'll bother then, especially as my boot time is around 35 seconds which seems pretty good to me.

Until 2 weeks ago, when I made the switch from a Sony Vaio SZ2XP/C, I had to wait about 3 minutes!

How soon you get used to better things. :D
 
Well I just restarted, and timed 57 seconds from the chime to the login window.

It varies, I tried again and it was 43 seconds.
 
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