Mac Book Taking forever to boot up

[askn]

Thank goodness for this site - I'm a new mac user and appreciate the support. I'm just wondering - is it normal for my Mac Book Pro to take 5 minutes to boot up? No I'm not exaggerating - 5 minutes looking at the Apple logo and the swirly circular animation!

The boot up speed was fine before I installed Boot Camp and Windows XP - now, it takes 5 minutes to boot into OS X although booting into XP does not take any longer than it does on my PC.

Any reason for this? Are there settings in OS X that I cn tweek to optimize and speed up the boot up into OS X?

 

[VegasACF]

Thank goodness for this site - I'm a new mac user and appreciate the support. I'm just wondering - is it normal for my Mac Book Pro to take 5 minutes to boot up?

No. Not in any way, shape, or form.

No I'm not exaggerating - 5 minutes looking at the Apple logo and the swirly circular animation!

You sure you're not exaggerating, even just a little bit?

The boot up speed was fine before I installed Boot Camp and Windows XP - now, it takes 5 minutes to boot into OS X although booting into XP does not take any longer than it does on my PC.

Then there is something amiss in your selection of Startup Disks, methinks.

Any reason for this? Are there settings in OS X that I cn tweek to optimize and speed up the boot up into OS X?

Go into the System Prefs, select the Startup Disk pane, and select the installation of OS X from the possible options. Should do the trick.

 

[askn]

Your suggestion just rebooted the computer. Nothing changed. This time I timed how long it took - 8 minutes, 46 seconds so it seems that I was being too modest, not exaggerating.

Any other suggestions?

 

[ThreeDee912]

That is slow. My old G4 (made in 2001) boots Tiger in about 45 seconds! After booting, look in the logs in /Library/Logs and see if there is anything fishy in there.

 

[askn]

Nothing looks fishy

 

[Cal UK]

I know it's said Macs can't get them (which is a lie) but could this be a virus? Have you been on any "dubious" ; ) websites recently? Any dodgy downloads?

 

[ThreeDee912]

I'm not saying it's impossible for a Mac to get a virus (any computer can, as long as someone takes the time to actually write one), but if there was one that could actually spread, the user would have to give it root permission with an admin password in order for it to infect the computer. And if there was a Mac virus known, every Mac website would have it as a 'top news story' and then everyone would know about the virus and then it wouldn't be able to spread as people would just delete the file instead of installing it.

I don't want this to be turned into another "Mac vs. PC" thread.

 

[VegasACF]

Oh, you just don't want me to start using images regarding such a turn of events. Since this hasn't turned into a Mac v. PC thing, but since I have the overwhelming urge to use an image, here's one on the house:

Nope. Not a clue what the hell it is. But it makes me happy. I think it's the smile.

 

[askn]

My how quickly the conversation shifted! Mac vs. PC?? I've solved my problem. I ran a disk utility and it repaired the disk. It seems that when I installed boot camp and then windows, it through some disk sectors out of wack. The disk utility repaired the issues and now my Mac Book flies! 8 seconds vs. 8 minutes. WOW!

Thanks anyway for trying.

 

[VegasACF]

My how quickly the conversation shifted! Mac vs. PC?? I've solved my problem. I ran a disk utility and it repaired the disk. It seems that when I installed boot camp and then windows, it through some disk sectors out of wack. The disk utility repaired the issues and now my Mac Book flies! 8 seconds vs. 8 minutes. WOW!

Thanks anyway for trying.

Oh, I was just playing around.

I'm glad you got your problem solved. I should remember from my days in tech support to start with the easiest thing first. "Is your computer plugged in?" "Is your computer turned on?"

I'm not saying that those questions would have helped here. Just making reference to conversations in my distant past.

And, just for fun, here's another image: