Progress Bar on Grey Boot Screen

It was installed on the 28th.. It only just happened today

I have rebooted several times since the install. This is the only time that I have seen this bar. It occurred on the Gray screen with the Apple logo. I rebooted again to see if it happened again, and the system started normally. I don't see much in the logs, but I will admit not knowing what to look for.

I initiated the restart from the apple menu while it was running. It restarted on it's own and I did not interact with the system after starting the the restart. The system appeared to starting normally, I got the gray screen, the the apple logo, and the spinning wheel... then the bar appeared and slowly filled in. The boot time was probably a couple of minutes which is good deal longer.

One of the reasons I was asking is it could have been an update... But I did not have the software update running so why would the firmware have been updated?

I want to know if I should be looking for problems, like did the system decide something was wrong have to do a more extensive test? And if so what did it detect? Or was this just the system clearing some trash or log files or something extraneous that it no longer needed? I don't mind if that is the case, I just want to know what it was was doing and why.

I ran the software update a few times after installing. Partly to make sure that everything I installed was up-to-date. However the software update was not running when I rebooted the computer. I closed all of my applications before initiating the reboot, and the software update was not one of the applications I closed.

Looking at the list of installed software by the updater, it is not listing any sort of firmware update. The last items listed installed was on the 8-30-09, listed as optional installs.

So if this was an update it was not an apple update that I can see...

Message was edited by: BluePhilosopher

I received no such warning. When I started the reboot I got the normal "Are you sure you want to restart your computer now? If you do nothing your computer will restart in x seconds." "Cancel" or "Restart Now" I selected restart now.

I think I found what may have cause it. Around the reboot time the system checked my startup volume. It's the only think that I can see that is out of the ordinary.

From my fsck_hfs.log (Filesystem repair log)

/dev/rdisk0s2: fsck_hfs run at Thu Sep 3 09:10:09 2009
Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-491~1).
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
** Checking extents overflow file.
** Checking catalog file.
** Checking multi-linked files.
** Checking catalog hierarchy.
** Checking extended attributes file.
** Checking volume bitmap.
** Checking volume information.
** The volume Macintosh OS X appears to be OK.

But what I don't understand is why it decided to check it. It does not appear to have made a change to the system or repaired any part of the file system.

Last Edited today at 11:41 am. There are alot of checks on the printer... But the printer is off and is only connected via wifi. Looking back through the log, this is the earlist entry for today.

Sep 3 11:30:52 macbook-pro Software Update[677]: JS: 10.6
Sep 3 11:30:54 macbook-pro Software Update[677]: JS: Firmware is up to date.
Sep 3 11:30:56: --- last message repeated 2 times ---
Sep 3 11:30:56 macbook-pro Software Update[677]: JS: model = MacBookPro5,1
Sep 3 11:30:59 macbook-pro Software Update[677]: JS: 10.6


Everything before that is from 2 days or earlier. But is the same message

Sep 1 21:53:20 macbook-pro Software Update[5540]: JS: 10.6
Sep 1 21:53:21 macbook-pro Software Update[5540]: JS: Firmware is up to date.
Sep 1 21:53:22: --- last message repeated 2 times ---
Sep 1 21:53:22 macbook-pro Software Update[5540]: JS: model = MacBookPro5,1

So I interpret this mean nothing was installed, right?

It looks like times when I ran the Software Update on my own.