5 minute startup

[Zimbop]

My mac takes about 5 minutes to startup! It gets past the splash screen and loads the wallpaper but then displays only the little spinning disk for 5 minutes.

I've started up using BootCD and run Disk Utility which reports no problems. Any ideas how to chase this down much appreciated.

Dual 1GHz G4 (WindTunnel) MacOSX
MacOSX 10.3.6
1G RAM

 

[fryke]

Try creating a 'fresh' user in System Preferences, turn off auto-login and look at the speed differences between the two accounts. If the new one is incredibly fast (like it should be), you know that you have to take a look at the first user's preferences and auto-login items.

 

[Zimbop]

Great suggestion. Thanks.

Logging in as "NewUser" is very fast, switching user to my regular account then creates the same problem as before, which of course suggests as you point out that it is a problem with my regular user account.

Not quite sure how to take it from here, I was expecting it to be a more generic system problem!

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Seems, for some, that clearing the font cache worked. I would not recommend using the method of deleting fonts in Font Book described here:

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20041117075217977

I would recommend clearing the font cache using a utility like Cocktail or something similar, testing the results, and then moving on from there.

 

[fryke]

Cocktail's a good utility anyway, but you might also want to try deleting the Finder's preference file (you'll find it in ~/Library/Preferences as com.apple.finder.plist) and - as I've said above - look at what's loading at login time etc. There sadly are a lot of things that _could_ be the cause of the problem.

I've come to the conclusion, personally, that I keep a backup of either my whole harddrive or just the user account. Then I can simply reinstall my system and - one by one - bring back what I need. This way, I get a clean system. Backing up and restoring can be a big time saver.