Why is Mountain Lion so slow to boot?

[Paradoxally]

I have a 2009 13 MB Pro (2.26 Ghz, with 8 GB RAM) and it used to take 20 seconds to boot with Snow Leopard, nice and snappy.

Now, with Lion and ML I've noticed it's pretty slow to boot up, taking over a minute. I have a HDD (so obviously it's never gonna be as fast as an SSD which takes around 5-10 seconds), but this is insane. I don't even have 'restore my windows on startup' enabled, 'cos I hate that feature and it even slows down my Mac at shutdown/restart.

When the machine is fully booted up, it's really fast (because of the 8 GB RAM), and never pages out (even with loads of apps open), so it's not lack of RAM issue.

Why is Lion/ML so slow, and is there a way to make it faster booting up? I did a clean install, still the same.

I mean...I can understand how ML/Lions are slower than (Snow) Leopards in the real world, but you didn't have to emulate this behavior in the OS world, Apple...

 

[SpyderBite]

I'm not experiencing the slow boot times that you are. I am on a 13" 2013 mbp with the stock 500gb hdd. Did you do a clean install of ML or just upgrade?

 

[Paradoxally]

I'm not experiencing the slow boot times that you are. I am on a 13" 2013 mbp with the stock 500gb hdd. Did you do a clean install of ML or just upgrade?

Clean install.

 

[simie]

I have ML installed on an external USB drive and Snow Leopard on the internal drive I just refuse to reinstall all the apps that work under Snow Leopard to find out that they don't under ML.

My ML is much faster at loading than Snow leopard, I am not really worried about it as I normally switch the mac and go and make a coffee.

I think it just depends on the hardware configuration and software.

 

[Paradoxally]

I have SL on my external drive too, it's a USB 2.0 and it takes 15 seconds to boot up. ML takes 1m+ on my internal, but then after the bootup it's really fast because of the RAM.

 

[blatopilot]

Are you experiencing any slowness in logging in? My boot time is acceptable, but once I enter my password it hangs considerably longer than Lion or SL.

 

[danakm]

Are you experiencing any slowness in logging in? My boot time is acceptable, but once I enter my password it hangs considerably longer than Lion or SL.

Both things are quite slow for me

 

[SlCKB0Y]

Make sure the correct startup disk is selected:
Settings >> System >> Start up disk.

If this is not set correctly the bootup will spend extra time before the grey Apple logo appears searching for drives.

If your delay is not at that point but after the logo shows up then it is hanging on something during the OS startup. Try starting your Mac up in verbose mode to see where the delay is:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1492

 

[Krazy Bill]

I have SL on my external drive too, it's a USB 2.0 and it takes 15 seconds to boot up. ML takes 1m+ on my internal.

I've used all OS's on the same internal SSD (Crucial M4). From a cold boot:

SL: 13 seconds
Lion: 19 seconds
ML: 23 seconds

All OS's have the same login files and for the most part similar configurations.

Snow Leopard continues to trounce Lion/ML in most every aspect of i/o speed for me. Blazing fast and like running a lean copy of WinXP on a modern machine.

 

[espiritujo]

On Snow Leopard I would get around 30 seconds with a regular hard drive, but with Mountain Lion I'm getting around 55 seconds. I'm kinda upset by it, but it's bearable. I do know that any other Windows Laptop that I would've had by now would've been at least 2 minutes, so I can't complain too much.

 

[shyam09]

Problem: ML is slow to boot
Solution: Don't shut your computer down. Put that baby to sleep

 

[Krazy Bill]

Problem: ML is slow to boot
Solution: Don't shut your computer down. Put that baby to sleep

For most yes, but long distance travelers need all the spare juice they can get and turning the machine off between "stops" can make all the difference.