macOS Monterey takes 25+ minutes to boot

Thanks, yes have used that line in the past, have switched it on 👍

Still got the same problem, taking about 15 mins to start up. But after reading around, it seems it's not isolated to external drives, although Monterey does have a big USB problem which has been widely publicised, so that's another thing.

My best guess is that it's related to Kernel Integrity Protection... apparently the new M1 Macs have a dedicated processor just for this, but it seems they may have overlooked it on Intel Macs.

Just before it hangs, it says that it's ignoring the kextcache and then proceeds to take 15 mins scanning kexts by the looks of it. Be interesting to know if it's just a result of upgrading or whether it's still occurs with new installs as well. I suspect it's just the former. If so, I might do a fresh install on another NVMe and try that.

Dodgy upgrades seems to be a consistent theme with all types of operating systems, I usually end up doing a new install as the system gets clogged up with old buggy software and abandoned files & drivers due to poor uninstalls. Not a bad thing to start afresh, just really frustrating that upgrades are still so poorly implemented.

On the plus side... after logging in and leaving it to settle down, Monterey seems to be running ok on my 2015 iMac. Although not tried plugging in my USB hubs yet! 😬

That's interesting, seems it might be just older Intel Macs that have upgraded from Big Sur that have the slow boot problem then. Might be something to do with over-zealous Kernel Integrity Protection. Hope Apple get round to fixing it, although not holding my breath as MacOS is geared towards for M1 machines now.

I have an external SSD on a 4K retina, late 2015 iMac and I suffer the same fate. I only use the iMac for office work, which is basic documentation and video conferencing. But the start up routine consumes 20 mins at the least, so I have switched on the pre-timed start-up feature. But this means I won't be able to apply software updates at will from any other apps I have installed.

I have an intel based 2020 MBP 13 too and am desisting from installing Monterey.

I have the same issue. Running a Mac Pro (late 2013) with an external SSD drive (LaCie Mobile SSD 500GB). Internal drive is too small to run Monterey.

I did a Safe boot today and it took 12 minutes. Then a regular boot took 21 minutes and had the message "Your Mac was restarted because of a problem.." displayed twice during the boot process.

I'm leaving the Mac running full time now until this is resolved.

I bought external SSD drive, Lacie 2TB and after installing it, I noticed that iMac boots slower than before , some issues when using Login Pro etc. Then I did format SSD and tried to re-install Monterey, after 30 minutes staring at my iMac´s screen " about 10 hrs 30 minutes left", I cancelled installation. And now I am using iMac´s own internal HDD and everything is working fine. So it seems that this SSD issue has something to do with Monterey(?)

I wrote to Lacie support and they advised me to call Apple support. I called to Apple support but they had no solution.

Then I called to store where I bought this SSD from. They said that it should be compatible, because Apple is selling those same products on their own website store.

Now I have a new 2TB SSD, but actually no use for it. :D

Yepp, as I already wrote in this place a few days ago.

Have same problem with iMac 2019, 128 GB RAM NWMe-SSD internal with Monterey.

Although there are "only" 5 minutes for iMac to boot it's something that's not acceptable at all!

Yes have seen a few reports of extremely slow boot times with internal drives too. Could it be a Monterey incompatibility with Intel Macs, or an SSD chipset issue then? Not seen this reported with M1 Macs.

Yes agree, it’s really shoddy from Apple. Monterey was obviously not ready for release. Think the M1 advances are great, but the onboard storage & memory is a bad move. Can see myself building a new PC & moving bank to Windows at this rate! 😬

Same problem here. Used to have Big Sur running from my external SSD (500GB) with good speed. Internal drive is HDD (slow as ****). iMac late 2015 i5 8gb Intel Iris Pro Graphics.

Startup time is now 5min +

Did the usual things (pvram reset etc). Nothing changed. AJA Speed is now down to 7MB/sec!!! Had 410MB/sec write speed (with 4GB file size).

HELP Apple!

I have the same issue. I have an external Samsung x5 SSD 1 TB. My iMac 2017 27" 64 GB i5, used to boot in less than 30 seconds using macOS Big Sur, unless I upgraded / even clean install of macOS Monterey on the SSD, but now I have insane boot of more than 3 minutes. Apple have to find a solution and resolve this bug ASAP. We can't tolerate such a big latency of startup.

Thanks, glad I read this as was going to try installing from scratch. Sounds like the slow startup is still a problem even with a clean install on SSD then. Maybe 3rd party SSD/NVMe storage is just not fully supported in Monterey 12.0.1.

CosmicTraveller wrote:

Thanks, glad I read this as was going to try installing from scratch. Sounds like the slow startup is still a problem even with a clean install on SSD then. Maybe 3rd party SSD/NVMe storage is just not fully supported in Monterey 12.0.1.

Maybe via a USB-C connection. I am currently running my 2013 Mac Pro for an NVMe drive in an external enclosure connected to the Mac via one of the Mac's USB3 ports. It takes a minute or two to boot but is usable. I have yet to swap the NVMe drive with the internal Apple SSD. I had to reinstall the Apple SSD internally in order to update to Monterey.

Finally sorted the problem by replacing my internal drive with an OWC Aura Pro X 1TB drive. Now takes about 3 minutes to boot. I may get that down if I remove my external drive which is no longer required.

Glad you found a drive that boots faster, although 3 minutes still sounds a long time. My old 2013 MBP with Big Sur boots in well under a minute. Have abandoned MacOS Monterey for now, it virtually bricked my 2015 iMac. Ended up going back to Big Sur.

It’s shocking that MacOS Monterey was released in such a state… it’s wasted far too much of everyone’s time. There’s just too many bugs and I’m doubtful they’ll all be fixed quickly or properly anytime soon. It wasn’t just the slow startup for me… bluetooth didn’t work properly & it kept freezing the whole computer. 

In future I’ll be sticking with the previous version of MacOS. Been burnt too many times upgrading early, and not much fun being an unpaid beta tester.