Slower Boot Times

I have noticed the last coupe of weeks my macbook pro has been taking a bit longer to boot up, normally it was ready in about 40secs, now its about 1min and 50 secs, what could be slowing it down.
I notice the log in page is different for Lion, i don't have a password or a guest account but it still has this which isn't really needed, would that slow things down or is there anything else i can check.
I use clean my mac regularly.

First, get rid of "Clean My Mac" as it's "Snake Oil". If you wish to really clean your Mac and do some maintenance, download and use OnyX. (It's free)

Check to see if you have any programs that are starting up when your machine is booting. The more programs that start, the slower the boot time will be. Eliminate anything you don't need that's starting up.

chscag said:

First, get rid of "Clean My Mac" as it's "Snake Oil". If you wish to really clean your Mac and do some maintenance, download and use OnyX. (It's free)

Check to see if you have any programs that are starting up when your machine is booting. The more programs that start, the slower the boot time will be. Eliminate anything you don't need that's starting up.

Click to expand...

I actually have onyx i never feel it does anything. How can i remove clean my mac, I'm not sure how to remove apps like these.

How can i see what programs are in startup?

Instructions for removing "Clean My Mac" are here in their knowledge base.

To find out what's running on startup, open System Preferences, Users & Groups. Click on the Login Items tab. To remove startup items, highlight the item and press the small minus button at the bottom. You may have to unlock the preference panel first with your Admin password.

And be sure to read the help items for OnyX to find out what it does.

hi i opened the startup thing the two programs were dropbox and hp event manager now removed, one thing is this new login screen for this osx lion is it slower than the old one?

Unfortunately, the Lion log on screen appearance is slower than Snow Leopard, at least that has been my experience both on an older MacBook and a brand new iMac. However, look at it this way.... how many times do you need to log on to your machine? Boot it up at the start of the day and when not in use, put it in sleep mode.

Lion tends to use more "fancy graphics techniques which, on some older hardware, slows things down. That said, it shouldn't be affecting boot times since all of the work happens after the machine has booted.

Have you installed anything recently? Not everything that gets started at boot shows up in that login items list (background stuff mostly).

Its been a while i forgot all about the macbook but recently went to turn it on and just got the apple logo with a spinning circle nothing would happen. I used a time machine backup, but it was quite slow for a while and my iPhoto library wasn't working. Although its sorted now, i have removed clean my mac, as well as other crap including virus barrier express and had a good look through the library folder to completely remove everything.

About keeping the mac going smoothly, do i need antivirus i seen some mac had macafee on it whats that about?

You don't really need Anti Virus software running as there are currently no Mac viruses in the wild. There is, however, some malware which can be avoided easily enough by staying away from certain sites.

What I usually recommend for "peace of mind" is to download and install the non intrusive and free "clamXav 2" AV software.