Mac OS X 10.3.6 (#9): Slow startup -- removing fonts successful for some

Slow startup -- removing fonts successful for some We continue to cover an issue where users experience unusually long startup times after updating to Mac OS X 10.3.6. As noted yesterday, the startup process, for afflicted users, seems to stall right after login. If automatic login is enabled, the stall occurs at the point right after the Mac OS X desktop appears, but before any icons or menubar items appear.

Some users have been able to eliminate the startup lag by removing extraneous, non-native fonts from their system using Apple's Font Book (located in the "Applications" folder on a standard Mac OS X installation):

Tom Hughes writes "I also noticed significantly slower startup times after the log-in on my G4 iMac after updating to 10.3.6.

"I was able to bring that start-up time from 2 minutes back to 15 seconds by cleaning out 'Font Book' back to its default fonts.

"Create a new user, determine the 'Font Book' default fonts, then go back to the original user and clean out 'Font Book' using that list as a guide. Be careful not to toss any of the default fonts since the system needs some of them to run properly.

Fonts can be removed using the "Remove Font" menu item inside Font Book. Also, make sure all default fonts are all reactivated or you will not be able to activate "Accounts" in "System preferences".

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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