Fails to finish loading every OTHER time...

[Windex]

Ok so I upgraded to SL about a week ago.

ever since then, my MBP will not finish booting. I get to my background, i see the upper left menu options, but i do not get the upper right ones (time, bat, sound, etc. etc.) if i move the mouse up there, i see the spinning wheel.

nothing happens. just stays like that, no force quit, no other menus, nothing.

I force a power off, and reboot. whammo, everything boots just fine. Then i shut down when i am done. Next time i turn on....same thing, doesn't finish booting.

anyone else have this problem? extremely annoying, and something i would not think a Mac to have a problem with.

thanks for any insight.

 

[chscag]

Check your login items for compatibility with Snow Leopard. What might be happening is SL is having a problem with something trying to load on startup.

System Preferences -> Accounts -> Login items. Temporarily remove all to see if that helps. Also check: /Library/StartupItems/ to see if anything there is loading on startup. There are also several other places. But those are the most common.

Regards.

 

[bobtomay]

More than likely some 3rd party app causing an issue.

Open up Console (in Applications/Utilities) and read through the logs.
See if you notice an app being mentioned there.

Also, try removing everything from Login Items.

I couldn't even boot into SL after upgrade. My issue was an app that had already been uninstalled but left a piece behind causing a kernel panic.

You can also compare your installed apps against the wiki - here

Not everything is listed there,the one causing my issue wasn't, but it's a good place to start.

Note for everyone: Always be prepared to troubleshoot your system when upgrading your OS.

 

[Windex]

Check your login items for compatibility with Snow Leopard. What might be happening is SL is having a problem with something trying to load on startup.

System Preferences -> Accounts -> Login items. Temporarily remove all to see if that helps. Also check: /Library/StartupItems/ to see if anything there is loading on startup. There are also several other places. But those are the most common.

Regards.

ok, there was one program that was loading on startup. iAlertU, I unchecked it. haven't attempted a reboot yet. checked the library/startupitems. found a folder called cma, not sure what that is, anyone?

the only thing i have installed since the upgrade was McAfee, and my Canon printer software (which had issues with one program not functioning, but i think its unrelated)

 

[Windex]

ok, another newb question, how do i properly uninstall a program?

i checked the console and found that it was having trouble locating istat. I don't need the widget, but i don't just want to drag it to the trash.....or is it just that simple?

 

[Windex]

ah, an on the list you mentioned to check for applications, it states that istat 1.3 has crashing issues. so this must be my problem.

nevermind on the removing the widget.....my apologies for being a slow newb.

 

[Windex]

ok, so after removing the istat from the widgets and putting it in the trash, then emptying the trash, then rebooted, no joy. still hangs. i searched logs again and found that it was still trying to find istat stuff in the app support folder. so i went there and deleted the istat folder.

so now i am going to attempt to reboot again.

also, i also saw errors for geektool. so i deleted all the templates i had built and disabled it, then removed it from the sys pref pane. but i don't know where to uninstall it from.

will post the results of the next reboot.

 

[Windex]

ok well. did a few reboots. and had one hang. then another didn't, then the following one did, but i left it for a min, and it finished. i checked the logs again, but didn't see any errors. so maybe its fixed. but i'm not totally sure.

i guess i will give it a few days of use and see what good i may have done in the long term.