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mr. burns · Feb 22, 2007, 12:13 AM

i used to have a gigabit dual 500 G4 machine with a third party 7200 startup drive and over a gig of ram. i got a mac pro to replace it finally, which i've had for over a month, and it seems like the mac pro starts up slower than the old machine.

they feel like pretty much the same startup speed until the finder starts loading. the G4 used to get to the finder, the menu bar would load, the dock, then the icons and it was done, all this in a few seconds. no more HD churning. it was ready to go in a snap. my mac pro takes a lot longer to do this part of the start up. the finder looks like it's all loaded but the HD is still churning like crazy and i have to wait a good 30 seconds or more for it all to settle down.

is this just a thing with the intels machines? i don't get it. i thought a computer that's 6 years newer would startup in a snap.

tinkered · Feb 22, 2007, 12:19 AM

my intel loads faster than my G4. I would guess that your system has a issues. I would wipe the drive an reformat and reinstall the os. You can copy the apps and user folder to another drive and then copy back after reinstall to save time. It it still slow I would guess it was your ram.

mr. burns · Feb 22, 2007, 12:31 AM

once everything is loaded, it performs like it should. it's just the startup that seems sluggish. not a huge deal as i rarely restart/shutdown the machine. was just wondering, for piece of mind.

is there a ram diagnostic program of some sort i can run? all 2 gigs show up fine in system profiler.

reluctant to wipe and reinstall, even though i have a seperate drive i could back everything up on. just a hassle, you know? :]

Big Mac · Feb 22, 2007, 03:20 AM

When you upgraded, did you use Migration Assistant?

dankar · Feb 22, 2007, 06:25 AM

My 3ghz Macpro starts way quicker than my old dual G5 2ghz. I would have started, open up photoshop before my old set even gets to the opening screen. Still have the old set in my office. Only bugbear is when crutching huge files, it slower than my old set, I am hoping it is the tiger OS and Creative suite CS that are the root of the problem.

cgc · Feb 22, 2007, 09:03 AM

My MacPro used to start way faster than my G4 Sawtooth but my MacPro has slowed down quite a bit. I figure a reinstall would fix this. Not sure why it's slowed, but I do have a few programs running at startup, although none are CPU intensive or large, I bet it's related to a program checking something online and freezing the system but I don't see anything obvious. Weird but not annoying.

mr. burns · Feb 22, 2007, 04:27 PM

Originally Posted by Big Mac

When you upgraded, did you use Migration Assistant?

nope. started fresh.

Leonard · Feb 22, 2007, 06:04 PM

Specs of the machine?

mr. burns · Feb 22, 2007, 08:30 PM

2.66 GHz
standard 250gig HD
2 gigs of ram. BTO ram, not third party.
radeon x1900xt

himself · Feb 24, 2007, 04:41 PM

What about login items? There may be a login process that requires Rosetta to run (Adobe Version Cue, for example), which I suspect may slow things down.

mr. burns · Feb 24, 2007, 06:16 PM

just itunes helper. :/

herbsman · Feb 26, 2007, 03:41 PM

i too, only have itunes helper as a login item and my mac pro is dog slow at startup. i hear what seems like endless drive access noise after i startup the computer. (it's as noisy as my 7 year old HP running windows 98) it'll last for a couple of minutes and once it's finally over i launch my apps. i want to do a clean install real bad right now but i think i'll wait a bit longer until leopard arrives.

mr. burns · Feb 26, 2007, 09:11 PM

you seem to have my exact problem.

MarkLT1 · Feb 27, 2007, 09:56 AM

I was having the same problems that you guys were experiencing. It turned out to be APE from Unsanity (used if you are running Shapeshifter, silk, etc..).

I found it by sshing into the MacPro in question, and running the following command:

sudo fs_usage -w -e sshd

This will barf out a whole ton of lines showing you which process is currently accessing your disk. It turned out that /usr/bin/update_prebinding and /usr/bin/update_prebinding_core were thrashing the disks for up to 2-3 minutes at login. A google search led me to this thread: Very slow startup - update_prebinding? - The macosxhints Forums in which it was shown that APE was the culprit. My SS demo had expired, and I have no need for it, so I uninstalled APE, and now no more problems.

Hope that helps!

mr. burns · Feb 27, 2007, 12:48 PM

That would be a shame. I do own shapeshifter and can't live without my Brushed 3.5 theme. I'll disable it and see what happens.

herbsman · Feb 27, 2007, 12:55 PM

Originally Posted by MarkLT1

I was having the same problems that you guys were experiencing. It turned out to be APE from Unsanity (used if you are running Shapeshifter, silk, etc..).

I found it by sshing into the MacPro in question, and running the following command:

sudo fs_usage -w -e sshd

This will barf out a whole ton of lines showing you which process is currently accessing your disk. It turned out that /usr/bin/update_prebinding and /usr/bin/update_prebinding_core were thrashing the disks for up to 2-3 minutes at login. A google search led me to this thread: Very slow startup - update_prebinding? - The macosxhints Forums in which it was shown that APE was the culprit. My SS demo had expired, and I have no need for it, so I uninstalled APE, and now no more problems.

Hope that helps!

thanks for the lead! i too have APE installed for my 'instant hijacking' feature for audio hijack pro. when i get home from work i'll have to uninstall it and see what happens.

MarkLT1 · Feb 27, 2007, 01:10 PM

Originally Posted by mr. burns

That would be a shame. I do own shapeshifter and can't live without my Brushed 3.5 theme. I'll disable it and see what happens.

If you read through the thread I linked, it appears it has something to do with keeping rosetta apps stable, and that Unsanity plans to make it "optional" in the future.

That, and it only causes this slowdown at login.. so if you dont log in/out all that often, its not too much a pain.

mr. burns · Feb 27, 2007, 01:21 PM

Yeah, I read through it, I just dreaded having to see Aqua and 'white' menus to test it out.

And it looks like disabling APE worked. Hopefully they'll update it soon.

Thanks for all the help. Nice to finally find the reason for this problem.

MarkLT1 · Feb 27, 2007, 01:30 PM

Originally Posted by mr. burns

Yeah, I read through it, I just dreaded having to see Aqua and 'white' menus to test it out.

And it looks like disabling APE worked. Hopefully they'll update it soon.

Thanks for all the help. Nice to finally find the reason for this problem.

No problem.. it is something that had been a thorn in my side for a couple months, but I restart so rarely, that I kept forgetting.. your post reminded me, so I decided to try and figure out what was causing it. Glad it was the source of your problem as well! Better to know, than to wonder if your OS install is screwed up or something!

herbsman · Feb 27, 2007, 07:45 PM

hey thanks a mil for letting us know about the APE issue. i uninstalled it, rebooted, and voila...boot up is ten times quicker than it was before and i don't have to listen to the drive go crazy while finder loads up. launching my favorite apps in the dock bounce about 3/4 less than it did before i uninstalled.

i hardly ever reboot my mac pro either, but knowing that it was starting up slower than my HP with win98 was very bothersome! now it's back to normal, thanks!

MattJeff · Feb 27, 2007, 08:48 PM

or do like me and never log out

cgc · Feb 27, 2007, 09:04 PM

I need to uninstall APE but now I need a replacement for FruitMenu.