What is this?

The last couple of times I booted my mac up, it sits on the grey startup screen for atleast ten minutes. The only thing on the screen is the Apple icon, then underneath is that spinning icon, and then underneath that is a loading bar.

I thought it was just installing updates or something at first, but then after doing it again its got me scared its a fault.

Can anybody tell me why this keeps happening? :S

Many thanks,
Stu

This is your Mac starting in safe mode.... as to why, I don't know.
I wonder if your shift key is stuck.
Try repairing permissions..... Applications, Utilities, Disk Utility, select the hard drive and click repair disk permissions.
Next, while in disk utility, verify and repair disk.
Next, try resetting PRAM Resetting your Mac's PRAM and NVRAM
Next, I'm out of ideas other than a hardware test Intel-based Macs: Using Apple Hardware Test and then the last resort of a reinstall.

Cheers for the ideas, giving them a whirl now.

You say its booting to safe mode, well when it finally loads up everything is normal, i've never been in a macs safe mode but i believe this isnt it :S

Its just annoying now that everytime I turn it on it takes ten minutes before i can actually use it

My shift keys cant be stuck neither or else I would probably be writing in caps. Wish this was the issue though cos it'd be a **** of alot simpler

Currently im repairing permissions (don't really know what this does tho lol) And then i'll try reset PRAM. Any other ideas I'm willing to try Just dont want to reinstall

Cheers for the response!

Stu

Stucraster said:

Its just annoying now that everytime I turn it on it takes ten minutes before i can actually use it

Click to expand...

Thats still a min quicker than my old windows machine LOL

Sorry I cant offer any help... Im new to Macs myself

There's this free program called onyx that goes a bit further in terms of cleanup on your machine. Give that a shot, and see what happens.

The reason its taking 10 minutes to boot is because it gets "stuck" on something that's trying to load and failing ... the system has to wait for a timeout before moving on (or trying again).

Your log files (viewable via console), examined immediately after a bootup should tell the tale.