Long Startup Time

sa13

Registered
When I startup my iMac G4 (OS 10.3.9) I get the apple sign and then a blank, blue screen for about 15 minutes before I can log in. After the computer is up, everything seems ok.

So far I have run Disk Utility several times in order to repair the disk and fix the permissions. I have also used other programs, such as Applejack, OnyX etc. to perform the same tasks. It seems that the disk is ok. However, the programs seem to repair the same permissions over and over. I also run
fsck –y (I’ve read about this in the forum), but the startup time is still very long.

Do I need to buy Disk Warrior to fix my problem, or is there any other way?

I would appreciate your help. Thank you.

Stephan
 
Are you sure those common "permissions repaired" messages aren't just warnings? If it doesn't explicitly say that it repaired a permission, then it didn't repair the permissions. Some warning messages show up every time you repair permissions -- something to the effect of "We are using special permissions for ***" -- those are completely normal and are just informational and do not reflect the fact that a permission was repaired.

Do you connect to server shares? Many people report delayed startups due to server aliases residing in the "Servers" folder. Are you on any kind of network?
 
sa13 said:
So far I have run Disk Utility several times in order to repair the disk and fix the permissions. I have also used other programs, such as Applejack, OnyX etc. to perform the same tasks. It seems that the disk is ok. However, the programs seem to repair the same permissions over and over. I also run
fsck –y (I’ve read about this in the forum), but the startup time is still very long.
Disk Utility and fsck use the same executable libraries when repairing an HFS+ drive so there is effectively no difference in the capabilities of these two tool. When you repair permissions, if the message you are getting is something to the effect of "...using special permissions..." you can safely ignore the message. It is for information only and will appear every time you run permission repair but it does not impact your system operation one way or the other.

The slow startup you are seeing is often the result of your Mac attempting to make network connections. See Apple Knowledge Base article
106797 for details.
 
If you're running Panther, v 10.3, then type "fsck -f" - not 'fsck -y'.

Boot holding the Shift key down and see if it starts any faster.
 
Back
Top