User Logins experience a 30-35 second hang

Question

Level 1

25 points

User Logins experience a 30-35 second hang

Hello,
I have a clean install of Leopard running on a 2.33 GHz 24 inch iMac with 3GB of RAM. Overall, everything runs smoothly with the exception of really sluggish user logins. My personal/admin account, a test user and root all see the same behavior.

1. System boots quickly (40 seconds) and then you see the login screen. (Time Machine disabled and no external HD's or iPod connected)
2. I pick any user and enter the passwd
3. You almost instantly see the user's desktop image and dock.
4. Here's the hang, you have to wait about 30-35 seconds where you can hear just a little HD activity.
5. Then you hear a quick blast of HD activity and within a second, you have your Top Menu Bar and Desktop items available.

At this point, all is normal and Leopard works fine.

Any ideas on this one?

Please advise.

Thank you!

PowerBook G4 Ti 867

Posted on Nov 5, 2007 2:59 PM

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Answer 1

J Moore

Level 1

54 points

Nov 5, 2007 5:10 PM in response to Udder

Did you ever get this resolved? I have the same problem on my Mac Pro with 4g ram. It is driving me nuts.

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Answer 2

Udder Author

Level 1

25 points

Nov 5, 2007 5:29 PM in response to J Moore

No resolution yet. But out of curiosity, what do you have in your /Library/StartupItems directory?

I have the following:

BRESINKx86Monitoring
M-Audio Firmware Loader
PACESupport
Qmaster
WDBMService
WDNotifier

Maybe it's something in there?

Thanks

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Answer 3

tick629

Level 1

15 points

Nov 5, 2007 6:27 PM in response to Udder

i would back up everything on time machine and then erase the contents of that folder. see what happens. Worst case scenario you restore it from your external hd.

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Answer 4

Nov 5, 2007 6:41 PM in response to Udder

Yeah, I'd recommend deleting those items, one by one, and identifying which of them is causing the delay. I'll bet something is making a call that is timing out or failing.

Is there anything in the Console log? Often you'll get warning or error messages when things are slow like that which should point you in the right direction.

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Answer 5

Udder Author

Level 1

25 points

Nov 5, 2007 8:12 PM in response to William Lloyd

SOLVED!!
I took the advice of using the ultra cool benefit of Time Machine and blew away the following from my /Library/StartupItems directory but I had to do it booted off a cloned disk because WDNotifier is actually a binary that was running that would come back to life every time I killed it which wouldn't let me remove it.

Here's the list I removed:

BRESINKx86Monitoring
M-Audio Firmware Loader
PACESupport
Qmaster
WDBMService
WDNotifier

I then restored each one from my Time Machine backup one by one, each time followed by a reboot.
The login hang was gone until I restored the last thing on the list, WDNotifier! Then my login time jumped from 1 second to about 35 seconds as it was like before.

WDNotifier is part of the software that came with my Western Digital My Book Pro II. I've removed the WDNotifier binary as well as the WDBMService folder and my WD drive still works fine.

Yay...my "fast as Tiger" Mac is back!

Thanks everyone and I hope this helps other people too.

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Answer 6

J Moore

Level 1

54 points

Nov 5, 2007 8:53 PM in response to Udder

Just so happens I have a WD Pro ll attached to my MacPro as well. I will look for those files in the morning and boot them right off my hard drive. I post back what I find.
Thanks

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Answer 7

J Moore

Level 1

54 points

Nov 6, 2007 5:08 AM in response to J Moore

In my startup items folder I found..

Aladdin
HP IO
HP Trap Monitor
RetroRun
WDNotifier

I removed the WDNotifier file. But instead of having to boot from a clone I control clicked on it and selected show package. Inside there was the WDNotifier with a couple other files and I was able to delete it from the package.

After a reboot I was able to go back and delete the WDNotifier package. Now my MacPro is back to normal desktop load speed.

Thanks for your help!!

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Answer 8

Nov 6, 2007 1:28 PM in response to Udder

Unlike all of you I only have:
Virex
VShieldEPOInterface

in my StartupItems folder and I am getting the 30-35 second lag on logins. Any suggestions on which I should investigate first?

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Answer 9

fellow

Level 1

84 points

Nov 24, 2007 7:25 AM in response to Udder

Well done! I just returned my WD MyBookPro for a LaCie Big Disk after deciding to to store backups off-site (and encrypted) with Amazon's S3, rather than use RAID 1. I had also noticed slow logins and two programs that needed removing:

/Library/StartupItems/WDNotifier and /usr/bin/WDdrv (or close to that, maybe sbin).

I could not remove either because they were running/open, so I used Lingon to disable WDNofier startup and also booted and logged in with shift key down. Then I could remove WDNotifier but could not find the WDdrv. After removing the former, login times are again fast and neither appear to run.

Due to my returning the drive, I have no need of these anymore, but I would recommend users of WD drives to consult WD support regarding their function.

Cheers,

fellow

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Answer 10

H4Inf

Level 1

0 points

Jan 17, 2008 8:09 AM in response to Udder

Awesome! I also had a WD MyBook and the software installed. I just noticed that every time I booted leopard, it was writing a crash log, and it was for WDBMService (Western Digital).

My MyBook 1TB drive died anyway.. so definitely removing their crappy software as well!

😀

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Answer 11

Jan 20, 2008 3:31 PM in response to Udder

Does anyone know if I can delete those HP folders? I don't want HP to load ANYTHING AT ALL on my computer.

Thanks for helping with the WD problem!

P.S. I luv my mac!

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