Bluetooth takes around 10 minutes to turn on from MacOS Monterey onwards. (external SSD install)

[Smarky]

Hello,

My internal SDD failed last weekend and I've had a lot of issues getting my iMac 2015 up and running using an external SDD, coming across quite a few issues with this model that I didn't previously have.

The last remaining issue I have - Bluetooth takes around 10 minutes after login to turn on. It's off when I boot up, I turn it on and it spins for around 10 minutes then comes on and works without any issues. On every boot up.

Going into bluetooth in system report is empty, however the bluetooth adapter shows in USB as 'Bluetooth USB Host Controller' and reports back fine, identifying it correctly. Going into the bluetooth details using option and command on the bluetooth symbol it shows as blank and 'Address: Null'

Due to the SSD issue I had to revert to older MacOS versions and it works all the way up to Monterey when this problem starts, I've installed Ventura and Somona via Opencore and get the exact same problem. I never had this issue before I switched to using an external SSD, it isn't a hardware issue as it works fine after it turns on and is fine in older MacOS versions.

I haven't been able to find a solution or know where else to look, the logs in console don't show much or any errors that seem to replace to this. I've done the SMC/PV ram reset stuff. I've reinstalled about 12 different versions of MacOS and completely reformatted the drives and started off from scratch and always this issue from Monterey or above.

 

[zevrix]

I remember starting having problems booting my iMac 2017 from external SSD back when Monterey was released. It suddenly started taking 20+ minutes for my iMac to boot (some other users reported similar issues). I didn't have anything like this working off external SSD for years with earlier systems.

At one point, as an experiment I switched enclosures on my two external SSDs. After this, my iMac boot time reverted to its normal startup time. (That iMac is history by now.)

Don't know if it has anything to do with your issue. Just keep in mind that Monterey (and possibly later systems, I don't know) has known issues with external SSD bootup.

 

[Smarky]

I remember starting having problems booting my iMac 2017 from external SSD back when Monterey was released. It suddenly started taking 20+ minutes for my iMac to boot (some other users reported similar issues). I didn't have anything like this working off external SSD for years with earlier systems.

At one point, as an experiment I switched enclosures on my two external SSDs. After this, my iMac boot time reverted to its normal startup time. (That iMac is history by now.)

Don't know if it has anything to do with your issue. Just keep in mind that Monterey (and possibly later systems, I don't know) has known issues with external SSD bootup.

Interesting, so it started working when you changed enclosures? I'm wondering if I should try getting a different external SSD.

Boot up time is slow for me too, but partly because it seems to hang looking for an internal drive, Monterey was always slow for me booting, even with he internal SSD, it used to hang half way for a few minutes.

One of the last things I was considering is perhaps trying a different SSD, I would mean buying another from Amazon though, but I'm surprised not to see more about this issue online, I have seen people with various issues but not this exact issue, so seems to suggest there might be something slightly different in my setup that is causing this.

The only two things that I think that could be is either the external SSD itself or perhaps my Mac's firmware which is stuck on 173.0.0.0 which is lower than it should be, I understand there are issues with my model of iMac and it not having updated the correct firmware, particularly as mine was a build to order iMac with SSD there is another thread on here with people stuck on 170.0.0.0 and I read also that you need 195.x or above for it to update the firmware further from external USB's or even have Monterey working with an SSD. So perhaps I should count myself lucky.