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Resolved Question

Very slow start-up

Apr 19, 2012 12:01PM PDT

When I turn my Intel iMac on, it takes 80 seconds for the Apple icon to appear and another 30 secs for the wallpaper to appear. My wife's iMac takes 10 secs and 15 secs respectively for these tasks. This is new behaviour - what might the problem be?

Both machines are running OS10.6.8.

Discussion is locked

fosterpapillon has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

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I would start
Apr 20, 2012 2:04AM PDT

I would start with clearing the PRAM, and then if that doesn't do it, disconnect all USB devices except your mouse and keyboard. If things improve, then you get to add devices back one at a time, rebooting each time a device is added, until you figure out which one is causing the delay. It will be exceedingly tedious and boring, but it's also the only way you're going to figure out what device is the problem. And you have to figure that it might take you, say an hour, to do this. Right now it takes about 2 minutes for you to go from power on to a usable system. So assuming you do that once a day, after a couple of months you will have "wasted" more time than it would have taken you to sort this problem right now. You may also get lucky and the first device you connect is the problem.

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Problem solved (?)
Apr 21, 2012 4:57PM PDT

Well, I think my problem has been solved - I reset the PRAM and that seemed to do the job. I did a star-up in verbose mode and nothing held up the process - the 80 sec and 30 sec figures are now 30 sec and 20 sec - still slower than my wife's Mac but maybe that's the extra RAM. I do, however, have a problem with permissions which I can't resolve - I've started a separate post for that.

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Answer
Connected devices?
Apr 19, 2012 9:30PM PDT

like hard drives or Optical drives/

P

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Three connected devices
Apr 20, 2012 9:15AM PDT

I have a 1 Tb external HD and two USB-powered DVD burner/drives. All have been connected for some months - well before the problem commenced. My internal optical drive failed a few weeks ago - I haven't been in a hurry to send it to the doctor because I need the machine daily and I have the two externals.

Disk Utility records six permissions errors but the Repair permissions button doesn't repair them.

I've run Disk Warrior but that didn't help - found no errors.

I'll try Jimmy Greystone's suggestion and, if that doesn't work, I'll re-install OSX and report back.

Thanks to both of you.