[Tenacious Dyl]

Hey everyone... my mac (os 10.3.3), has every once and a while frozen while starting up. This is always right before, or during the "network" part of startup... anywho... never did anything weird, and i just had to deal with it. clean-installing the newest os x did no help, neither did unplugging everything and taking out the ram. So i just deal w/ it for now... seems there are others in my boat.

anywho... booted it up today, same freeze, same "hold down the power button" method of fixing... and booted it up again, to reveal a fully functioning finder and other applications, but the boot panel still there!! What the heck... it doesn't effect anything to do w/ my system, applications, or speed. But its there, and refreshing things, and logging in and out won't fix it!! please help me find a solution... here is a picture!


http://photos.camerahouse.com.au/en/...sp?P=87684694#

notes: when the cursor is over the "startup box" it shows the spinning multi-color pinwheel. When the cursor is off the startup box there is just a normal mouse. my system is not lagging at all!

Also, i know this isn't the normal loading screen, i replaced it with a new .jpg. But this ,jpg has been on the computer for over 3 months... its not the picture causing this. Its very very odd.

[rytc]

I'd just say to do an archive and install of 10.3 and be done with it, I've never seen this happen before nor have I seen OS X crash during the startup, so I'm guessing something is screwy. Installed any haxies recently?

Originally posted by Tenacious Dyl:
Hey everyone... my mac (os 10.3.3), has every once and a while frozen while starting up. This is always right before, or during the "network" part of startup... anywho... never did anything weird, and i just had to deal with it. clean-installing the newest os x did no help, neither did unplugging everything and taking out the ram. So i just deal w/ it for now... seems there are others in my boat.

anywho... booted it up today, same freeze, same "hold down the power button" method of fixing... and booted it up again, to reveal a fully functioning finder and other applications, but the boot panel still there!! What the heck... it doesn't effect anything to do w/ my system, applications, or speed. But its there, and refreshing things, and logging in and out won't fix it!! please help me find a solution... here is a picture!


http://photos.camerahouse.com.au/en/...sp?P=87684694#

notes: when the cursor is over the "startup box" it shows the spinning multi-color pinwheel. When the cursor is off the startup box there is just a normal mouse. my system is not lagging at all!

Also, i know this isn't the normal loading screen, i replaced it with a new .jpg. But this ,jpg has been on the computer for over 3 months... its not the picture causing this. Its very very odd.

[RayX]

Looks like you have customized your logon screen...you've probably stuffed something in that area. What exactly have you changed/installed?

As for hanging on the network part, possibly due to your system having problems receiving an IP address if you are using DHCP, the DHCP server might be doing something strange, also make sure the network connection is not dropping packets, etc.

[Tenacious Dyl]

As for haxies, I was using clear dock for a few weeks. Also, I did replace (and back up) my login picture.

Note, that either of these things was not my problem. When I again clean installed Panther, nothing on it but the system for a few weeks, it still had this problem. Note, I cleaned EVERYTHING before the clean-install, system cache, I recent the PRAM, everything... it was a clean slate. It had the problems anyway. So later on, I figured I might as well d/l my clear dock and different boot panel. It kept up the problem, and recently started my permanent boot panel desktop.

My network (plugged into my ethernet or not) still stalls (or at least is where startup freezes most of the time). Whether or not I have a cable in my ethernet port makes no difference, neither does whether I am getting service or not through that cable. It also makes no different if I am directly on the network, or on a hub/router.

Please. will someone provide help or insight so that my computer will boot up with no difficulties!! I bought this very recently and am disapointed over this problem!!!

[lookmark]

Have you tried booting in safe mode? Restart your machine holding down shift.

If that fails, I'd recommend booting from the CD (insert your OS X CD Disc 1, restart, and hold down C to boot from it), and either run disk repair + repair permissions from the Installer's utility, or do reinstall the OS w/ an Archive + Install.

[absmiths]

Originally posted by lookmark:
Have you tried booting in safe mode? Restart your machine holding down shift.

What is 'safe mode'? Windows 95 had a safe mode, and Mac OS 9 had a load with extensions disabled mode (boot with shift down), but I don't know of any safe mode for OS X.

[JKT]

Originally posted by absmiths:
What is 'safe mode'? Windows 95 had a safe mode, and Mac OS 9 had a load with extensions disabled mode (boot with shift down), but I don't know of any safe mode for OS X.

Similar thing - any third party .kexts are not loaded during a safe boot mode in OS X, which can help you bypass problems with hardware drivers etc.

For the original poster, have you tried disabling any unused and rearranging your Network ports? If it is stalling at the Initialising Network stage it sounds like it is looking for a network that isn't there...

Go to System Preferences>Network.

Select Network Port Configurations from the "Show:" pop-up menu and disable any ports you aren't using, then re-arrange (by drag and drop) those that you are so that they are scanned for in the most logical sequence (the topmost will be scanned for first when starting up, so make it the one that is most likely to be connected such as Ethernet). This might solve your issue.