Spinning beachball & slow start up

[easterhay]

Hi y'all

Running 10.3.9 on a G4 iBook, suddenly started getting a verrrrry slow start up. Everyting fine up to the log in screen, choose user, enter passw, go through bits of blue screen right up until the wallpaper loads then, bam, on with the brakes.

Spinning beachball, plus date, time, battery, language, volume, intnet connect, applescript and network icons all appearing one by one, very lazily, with no menu bar behind them.

Takes a good couple of minues, thereafter everything ok. This doesn't happen when I reboot in safe mode. I've got about 30pc hard drive available, run a few bits of basic maintenance, but so far nothing.

Any suggestions welcome (apart from "Stick it up your arse and buy a PC") :P

[PBear]

Try removing any login items from System Preferences > Accounts > Login items. Login items are one of the things that are disabled in Safe Mode.
What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? (Mac OS X)
Repair Disk from the Install Disc or run fsck.
Resolve startup issues and perform disk maintenance with Disk Utility and fsck

[Hughvane]

And then run Repair Permissions. I recommend Onyx, a free utility. It keeps your Mac sweet and tidy. If you use your Mac a lot, run Onyx weekly.

Incidentally, I've just noticed your location - Patagonia - and your first reply was from Alaska, and now from NZ. Your Mac is a well-traveled beast.

[easterhay]

haha, truly a globetrotting request.

thanks for the answers, will follow your advice.

happy trails

[easterhay]

Gad, I've just fixed it. None of the above: apparently it was looking for an Airport hook up that was no longer there.

Now I've re-established it, it's a happy iBook again. Thanks anyway!

'hay

[kofi]

how did you fix the aiport error. I think i have a similar issue on my powerbook g4. i cant get pass the boot screen. cant get into safe mode either. I think it has to do with an airport issue because the crash logs indicate that airportd is crashing a lot.