Peculiar booting issue... driving me insane!

[bys]

Hi guys, OK so I've searched around, looked at the console output, uninstalled software, booted into verbose, user mode, repaired the disk with everything under the sun (booting from external OS X and running disk warrior like a billion times).. and yet I still have a very specific problem.

While its no way detrimental to the operation of my macbook its setting off my OCD on my otherwise perfect running OS X / WIN 7 MBP (unibody, late 2008).

OK So basically - my macbook always hangs on restart. BUT if I then hold down the power button - turning it off and then starting again - its fine! In other words, hard or cold boots are fine.

Also when I "alt" boot - that is I manually choose the start up disk, its fine also! So maybe there some error with choosing the startup disk (even though I went back and selected it multiple times).

I am basically calling it quits on trying to fix it (save nuking the HDD and installing again) - the work around is - boot into the start up disk option screen by default (the one when you hold alt after boot) - is there anyway to set this as the default behavior?

Cheers.

[chscag]

Have you tried resetting the PRAM as the startup sequence and disk is stored there.

To answer your question about setting the default behavior.... you can give rEFIt a try. A bit complex to get working right, but it will do what you ask. And it's free.

[bys]

hey i tried resetting the PRAM, but the same issue... I logged in, restarted and it was stuck on with the apple logo and spinning wheel.

Actually it also froze on a cold boot yesterday, even after I manually selected the start up disk. But again power-off and power-on, and it was fine.

I have no idea whats going on, I might just have to live with it. :S