Q: OS X 10.8.5 takes 10 minutes to boot up

Before you do ANYTHING backup  your computer, your HD may be failing!

Run Apple Hardware Test in Extended Mode at least 3X back to back. If any error codes appear that has confirmed you have a hardware problem. At that point the best thing to do is to make an appointment at your local Apple Store or AASP and take it in.

If no errors appear you aren't out of the woods yet, you may still have a hardware issue however AHT may not have picked it up.

The boot process has several stages. Please see this support article and determine at which stage the problem happens.

gvenkatesan wrote:

 

Hi rkaurmann87,

 

Thanks for the information. I did hardware test thrice but everything looks good. I currently live in India and not sure if they have any local Apple store. Any other thoughts?

 

Thanks,

Govindaraj

You  did EHT 3 times all in EXTENDED MODE?

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.

Step 1

Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar.

Enter "BOOT_TIME" (without the quotes) in the search box. Note the timestamps of those log messages, which refer to the times when the system was booted. Now clear the search box and scroll back in the log to the last boot time when you had the problem. Select the messages logged after the boot, during the time something abnormal was happening. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).

For example, if the problem is a slow startup taking three minutes, post the messages timestamped within three minutes after the boot time, not before. Please include the BOOT_TIME message at the beginning of the log extract.

If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.

When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.

Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Step 2

Still in Console, look under System Diagnostic Reports for crash or panic logs, and post the entire contents of the most recent one, if any. In the interest of privacy, I suggest you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if present (it may not be.) Please don’t post shutdownStall, spin, or hang logs — they're very long and not helpful.

Remove anything that's inserted in the card-reader slot, including an empty adapter.

THANKS!

I had a micro sd to sd e,pty card in my imac 2012 and it took ages to boot.

Once booted it was fine.

Removing this empty card and rebooted in about 1 minute.

Thanks for the tip.

Raegrds,

Armand

I have the same problem: OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.5 takes up to 20 minutes to boot (displaying Apple logo and spinning gear). Here is first messages that was logged after reboot:

21.12.13 2:33:00,000 bootlog[0]: BOOT_TIME 1387578780 0

21.12.13 2:49:30,000 kernel[0]: PMAP: PCID enabled

21.12.13 2:49:30,000 kernel[0]: Darwin Kernel Version 12.5.0: Mon Jul 29 16:33:49 PDT 2013; root:xnu-2050.48.11~1/RELEASE_X86_64

21.12.13 2:49:30,000 kernel[0]: vm_page_bootstrap: 1973008 free pages and 107760 wired pages

21.12.13 2:49:30,000 kernel[0]: kext submap [0xffffff7f80742000 - 0xffffff8000000000], kernel text [0xffffff8000200000 - 0xffffff8000742000]

21.12.13 2:49:30,000 kernel[0]: zone leak detection enabled

21.12.13 2:49:30,000 kernel[0]: standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us

21.12.13 2:49:30,000 kernel[0]: standard background quantum is 2500 us

21.12.13 2:49:30,000 kernel[0]: mig_table_max_displ = 74

21.12.13 2:49:30,000 kernel[0]: TSC Deadline Timer supported and enabled

21.12.13 2:49:30,000 kernel[0]: corecrypto kext started!

21.12.13 2:49:30,000 kernel[0]: Running kernel space in FIPS MODE

So, PMAP: PCID enabled message was posted more than 10 minutes after the boot start. Hard drive was constantly active all this time.

@Linc Davis, could you please look at this log? I have no card or adapter inserted into SD slot.

Use Time Machine ~  then the problem no longer exists.