Resolved Mavericks taking 5+ minutes to boot up on MBPr, help!

[djoliverm]

Hey guys, so I did a clean install of Mavericks from the final public release on the Mac App Store which I downloaded yesterday, and did Migration Assistant without copying over System settings.

Now, my MBPr is taking on average about 5+ minutes to boot up (I'm getting the spinning loading wheel with the Apple logo). I've booted into Safe mode to clear the dynamic loader shared cache, and sometimes it will reboot again rather quickly (around 5 seconds) and others it's back again to 5+ minutes. I then rebuilt the kernel extension caches, and this doesn't seem to actually do anything strangely (as this has been cited as a fix to slow boot times to much success.)

I've tried all sorts of different permutations of restarts, cold starts after a shutdown, and it almost seems like it's random. I then decided on turning on File Vault 2 to see if this might affect it somehow, and it doesn't: it's exactly the same. Getting to the File Vault login window is quick, but once it starts loading the OS, it goes back to the long load times. I've also repaired disk permissions, and still the same behavior.

Any ideas what this could be? I appreciate any help or suggestions on the manner. Thank you.

 

[madmacfan]

Hey guys, so I did a clean install of Mavericks from the final public release on the Mac App Store which I downloaded yesterday, and did Migration Assistant without copying over System settings.

Now, my MBPr is taking on average about 5+ minutes to boot up (I'm getting the spinning loading wheel with the Apple logo). I've booted into Safe mode to clear the dynamic loader shared cache, and sometimes it will reboot again rather quickly (around 5 seconds) and others it's back again to 5+ minutes. I then rebuilt the kernel extension caches, and this doesn't seem to actually do anything strangely (as this has been cited as a fix to slow boot times to much success.)

I've tried all sorts of different permutations of restarts, cold starts after a shutdown, and it almost seems like it's random. I then decided on turning on File Vault 2 to see if this might affect it somehow, and it doesn't: it's exactly the same. Getting to the File Vault login window is quick, but once it starts loading the OS, it goes back to the long load times. I've also repaired disk permissions, and still the same behavior.

Any ideas what this could be? I appreciate any help or suggestions on the manner. Thank you.

try a pram reset and a smc reset, that should help.

 

[djoliverm]

try a pram reset and a smc reset, that should help.

Totally forgot about that! Let me do that and I'll report back and see if that does it, thanks again.

 

[djoliverm]

Resetting PRAM/SMC did nothing ;(

Just reset PRAM and SMC and nothing. Gonna try signing into the guest account or creating a new user account and see if it's somehow related to the user.

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So I created a new admin user and it's taking just as long to login, so it seems to be an issue with Mavericks. Would entering the recovery partition and re-installing Mavericks on top possibly sort this out? I'm stumped. Thank you guys for any help and suggestions.

 

[snsd]

Perhaps you can try to stop applications from launching automatically on startup by hiding application in login items and see if it helps.

 

[djoliverm]

Perhaps you can try to stop applications from launching automatically on startup by hiding application in login items and see if it helps.

The 5 minutes is spent before entering the OS, on the grey Apple logo loading screen. I'm not talking about the startup once it enters the OS (that's rather quick, actually quicker than ML), but there is some sort of loading delay while the OS loads.

 

[squeakr]

Make sure that your start up disk is correctly selected.

 

[djoliverm]

Make sure that your start up disk is correctly selected.

Thanks squeakr, already tried this before, but tried it again just in case to no avail. I only have one startup volume. I've also tried doing this by booting holding down Option, same thing.

 

[squeakr]

Did you boot into recovery mode and then run the disk utility, as it has more capabilities when booted this way than when booted through normal start up methods?

 

[djoliverm]

Yes, did try repairing disk from recovery partition, still the same

Did you boot into recovery mode and then run the disk utility, as it has more capabilities when booted this way than when booted through normal start up methods?

Yes, of course, otherwise you don't have the option to verify or repair disk permissions on the same drive that you're running off of. Of note though, I kept finding some "ACL found but not expected" errors, but according to an Apple support document, these can be safely ignored. There's also a command-line tool called ACLr8 which can get rid of these, which I will do no.

But yeah, still same problem unfortunately. I'm thinking of reinstalling the OS...

 

[squeakr]

Have you checked the SMART status on the drive. I saw this same thing happen before and the drive was dying. You could do a recover over the top. It just replaces the OS and leaves the file system in tact.

 

[djoliverm]

Have you checked the SMART status on the drive. I saw this same thing happen before and the drive was dying. You could do a recover over the top. It just replaces the OS and leaves the file system in tact.

It's a MacBook Pro Retina, sorry if it wasn't too clear in the first post, so 100% SSD. And yeah, I'm thinking of just reinstalling the OS on top of itself in a bit, and if it still goes on it must have something to do with my previous stuff transferred from Migration Assistant.

If that's the case, I have two options: reinstall Mavericks clean and just literally start from scratch (which will suck), OR, wipe the drive clean, install ML again, do migration assistant of my ML backup, and then just do an upgrade from ML again. Hmmmm....

 

[mfram]

Do you have any USB devices plugged into the computer? I have heard some USB disk drives causing this type of behavior on boot.

Unplug all USB devices, even hubs, and try to boot the computer. See if it boots faster. If that works, you can start narrowing down the culprit.

 

[Manic Harmonic]

Have you tried booting in verbose mode to see where it's hanging?

 

[djoliverm]

Do you have any USB devices plugged into the computer? I have heard some USB disk drives causing this type of behavior on boot.

Unplug all USB devices, even hubs, and try to boot the computer. See if it boots faster. If that works, you can start narrowing down the culprit.

No USB devices mfram, nothing plugged in.

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Have you tried booting in verbose mode to see where it's hanging?

No, but let me try that. I'll take a picture and see. What should I be looking for? Never booted in verbose mode.

 

[Pompiliu]

My old 2012 retina boots in a few seconds. So, it's your fault, surely you did something wrong.
My advice: Get a PC! Macs aren't for you!

 

[djoliverm]

My old 2012 retina boots in a few seconds. So, it's your fault, surely you did something wrong.
My advice: Get a PC! Macs aren't for you!

Haha, thanks for the sarcasm. Sadly it doesn't help, but yeah, I also have the first gen retina. I think something from the backup when transferred is messing it up.

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Have you tried booting in verbose mode to see where it's hanging?

OK, so it hangs on this last line: "AppleUSBMultitouchDriver::checkStatus - received Status Packet, Payload 2: device was reinitialized"

I'll upload the photo in a bit with the rest of the stuff. It hanged on that for about the same amount of time and once it passed it quickly blazed passed everything else. Don't know if it's possible to save the verbose output to text somewhere.

Any thoughts? Thanks for all your help guys btw! Really appreciate it!

 

[kappaknight]

Does the Retina MBP not have SMART status for the SSD? Even though it's not an easily replaceable part, it could still die.

 

[djoliverm]

Does the Retina MBP not have SMART status for the SSD? Even though it's not an easily replaceable part, it could still die.

It actually does, and I checked just in case and it is "Verified" so I guess all good, at least with SMART, however in googling the line in verbose mode where it gets stuck, for some other people it mean their drive was dead, but apparently the string is meant for USB devices, so maybe some sort of USB driver is causing this.

I did find another forum post that had the same problem and they fixed it with Onyx, which I don't think is out yet for Mavericks. I guess a re-install wouldn't hurt to try in the mean time. Hmm...

 

[Manic Harmonic]

This is kind of risky, but you could try removing that driver temporarily and see if it helps. Make sure you have a mouse handy though because your trackpad probably won't work without it. And be prepared for a possible kernel panic. If that helps at least it would take you a step towards fixing the problem. Also, sometimes the cause of the hang can actually be the next thing that's supposed to load.

 

[djoliverm]

This is kind of risky, but you could try removing that driver temporarily and see if it helps. Make sure you have a mouse handy though because your trackpad probably won't work without it. And be prepared for a possible kernel panic. If that helps at least it would take you a step towards fixing the problem. Also, sometimes the cause of the hang can actually be the next thing that's supposed to load.

OK, cool, good to know about the possibility that the hang might also be the next thing that's going to load. On that topic, is there any way to save the output of the verbose startup text? Or not have it complete and boot into OS X? Because after it completed, it flew past the rest and could not possibly see what came after.

I decided to reinstall the OS from the recovery partition (i.e., on top of itself, so as not to lose any files) and it's back to the same unfortunately lol. FML.

 

[Manic Harmonic]

You can look at it in the console, just scroll up until you find the message where it hangs and go from there. Also note that there is a search function in console.

 

[djoliverm]

You can look at it in the console, just scroll up until you find the message where it hangs and go from there. Also note that there is a search function in console.

OK, thanks for the tip. Gonna try to get the text and start searching to see if I can narrow it down.

 

[xgman]

Do this at the command prompt:

sudo chown root:admin /

sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel

sudo kextcache -system-caches

Also make sure the disk is selected in system preferences-Start up Disk

Then reboot a time or two. Should help.

 

[djoliverm]

Done this already before, but guess it won't hurt to try again

Do this at the command prompt:

sudo chown root:admin /

sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel

sudo kextcache -system-caches

Also make sure the disk is selected in system preferences-Start up Disk

Then reboot a time or two. Should help.

Hey xgman, tried this already before, but I'll give it a shot once more just in case. For me every time I tried it it didn't do anything. It is hanging on that one line which I pasted a few posts up. I'm mentally preparing myself to just start fresh over the weekend, and do some tests right after a fresh install. If it's still doing the same thing, then I know it might have to be hardware related. Thanks.