macOS Monterey takes 25+ minutes to boot

Yes, I tried to restart, and tried to install couple of times, but same thing: "11 hours left", and it didn´t proceed at all.

I wrote to Lacie Support and they tried to find solution, but no success.

Then they advised me to contact Apple Support.

I called to Apple, but they had no solution, neither....

You lucky one! No it hasn‘t. I‘ve the problem since 2 weeks after Monterey ran flawlessly. It even got worse after second update to Monterey. Now it raised to over 6 minutes boot time.

iMac (2019), 128 GB RAM; Samsung 970 NVMe-SSD internal.

I have Monterey working fine on my 2017 iMac. initial install but the moment I upgraded to 12.2.1 when my mac boots up nearly all apps show problems. Adobe apps fail with authentication issues. iCal gives connection issues and all browsers will fail to load web pages.

This appears to be issues connecting to the internet or server. Wireless shows connected but nothing is working. This lasts for a few minutes and I have to retry all until they work.

Looks to me that the load order of system services is out of sync.

I really hope that with the next update of Monterey this is fixed.

I did; my problem was a very slow internal drive. At 5400 RPM, the enrtry level HDD just wasn't up to the task.

Replacing use of the internal HDD with an external SSD as boot drive fixed it.

But, before I did that I confirmed the drive was the problem by running Etrecheck Pro I got from https://www.etrecheck.com/.

I agree with most of what has been said here regarding the Monterey update and the slow start up.

And I am also a Mac user since more than 20 years, and I agree with some remarks that this has been the worse update I've ever experienced, it's tragic in today's world that a company that is valued at $ 2 trillion that they don't have the resources for professional software developers, and if you think this is not the reason, is it because, like their trick with slowing down older iPhone's in the past with every new iPhone release, that they are trying the same trick now with their Macs ? Whatever they are doing, they are driving me and people like me who are frustrated with the software problems to change to Windows 11.

If you look back in History, all past Empires eventually fell, if Apple don't get their act together soon, I'm afraid the future looks grim and Mr Musk can rub his hands if he goes past just offering a new Smart Phone but a PC solution, maybe running Linux at first.

I see a number of people with 2015 4K iMacs, and a lot with Samsung T5 SSDs. I happen to have both. In my case, the internal boot goes fine, but the external (SuperDuper) clone boot does not. It just stalls halfway and restarts.

So, if I want to buy my way out of this problem, should I replace my Mac, external SSD or both?

I have exactly this configuration (2015 4K iMac + T5 SSD) and my system works well with Big Sur. I tried Monterey for few weeks, but it is a terrible. My boot time was over 30 minutes. Eventually I decided to keep Big Sur until next major Macos (I hope that next time Apple will release a better OS).

Monterey is clearly slowed down on Intel Macs due to the Intel emulation layer.  This version should never have been released on the Intel based Macs and there is no way that this could ever have been seriously tested.  

I have spent multiple unsuccessful Genius appointments only to learn that Apple cannot or will not support my family who collectively own 4 Macs, 3 iPhones, 2 iPads and an Apple Watch. Apple would not even downgrade me back to Big Sur which ran perfectly and speedily.

I lost all access to my Apple Mac backups because of Apple’s proprietary encryption standards which preclude reading from non-Apple platforms.

I had to track down 3rd party SSDs and  freelancing Unix Engineers in order to make my macs work again.  It has been a 4 month nightmare.

I now have two functioning macs and my new project is a migration away from proprietary vendor lock-in and towards open, non-Apple platforms.  I will never forget Apple’s actions in 2022 and their cavalier actions towards their customers.

TakomaFan wrote:

Monterey is clearly slowed down on Intel Macs due to the Intel emulation layer.  This version should never have been released on the Intel based Macs and there is no way that this could ever have been seriously tested.  

That's not true. Monterey is about the fastest system I've had on my 2017 Intel iMac. Most of the reasons for slow performance are junk ware, i.e. anti-virus, cleaning, etc. apps, that the user has installed or the face that the model purchased by the user was the slowest offered by Apple at the time of purchase: 8 GB of RAM and 5400 rpm hard drive.

Sorry, no antivirus, junkware, cleaning apps. Both macs have 16GB of RAM (doubled RAM on both with Crucial long ago). Both were screaming fast until Monterey stopped them cold in the tracks. Monterey was so bad that it could not even update to the next .1 Monterey version. It would go for several days of “15 minutes left”.

What a low quality update.

I did as well. I kept one Mac with Monterey running nonstop for several months plugged into an APPC UPS, only allowing the power nap until I could downgrade it to Catalina. I did not have time to deal with a 40 minute boot process.

The BIG MISTAKE for me was updating to Big Sur from Catalina on iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019) w/ 1 TB Fusion Drive + 64 GB Memory. It went from < 30 sec. startup to 3-5 minutes+, but realistically it was 10-15 minutes before everything (macOS background, Desktop, apps,..etc) would settle down. I can hear the HDD working hard during that time.

I was also successful, twice, with performing a clean install of Big Sur on internal HDD and external SSD (also booting from it), but in both situations it reverted to the slow startup after migrating and manually transferring my user account and apps.

All I want is my iMac back to how it was before Big Sur, and to figure out what in my user account is causing it. I shouldn't have to deal with this. I spent two separate weekends trying to fix it (15+ hours alone with the last attempt).

I am planning to get the new iMac Pro, but worried this issue will carry over once I migrate to it.

The only positive from this is that startup has improved a little bit, and I was finally able to get my Mail "On My Mac" Mailbox Storage mailboxes to list alphabetically in sidebar after removing and reimporting mailboxes following years of unsuccessful attempts to fix it.

It is clear that the problem is related to a combination of factors — even the type of the computer matters. In my case, I can see it in an iMac 2019, but not in an iMac 2017. It is also clear that it has something to do with the USB3 driver since connecting the external SSD using a USB2 cable (like an Apple charger cable) leads to a minimal boot time but, of course, a very slow system.

In my opinion, there is nothing we can do except try to exchange the SSD manufacturer. Hence, I highly suggest that everyone who has this issue submit a bug to Apple and link this thread.

I have spent a lot of time with Apple and third parties on this issue. I was all Apple with no third party involved so no foreign SSD drives or any non Apple equipment. Unfortunately, 4 Apple Genius appointments yielded nothing but Apple managing to upgrade Monterey to the next minor version and the slow problem persisted.

I hesitated to even post again as I’ll be told that I’m wrong, it’s my fault and that I use non Apple products, have buggy antivirus and background cleanup processes and on and on… none of which is the case. But I will tell you what I did.

I decided that I was going back to Catalina. My older Mac Mini was so slow that it was completely useless and my newer Mac Mini was super slow but functioning. In addition, the new Finder interface was so unintuitive that I don’t really even consider it to be usable. Apple would not help with a downgrade, so I decided that it was my project. I decided to attack the project from the worst problem onward, while leaving super slow Monterey running 24 hours a day on a UPS.

The worst problem was that I had virtually no way to get my work done, and almost all of my data was locked in Apple only proprietary encrypted file systems… a big mistake. I did have a Synology so after my final failed Genius appointment I drove directly to Best Buy, purchased a Samsung Galaxy Windows laptop and spent the following 2 months migrating Mac data which had been saved to the Synology to non-Apple external drives with exFAT.

Now having a fully functional Windows laptop with data in industry standard formats I was free to allow non-Apple people to operate on my macs. I had ordered two Crucial 2TB SSD drives, networked around my area starting with some Apple people & found a place that could install them. They installed El Capitan and a Unix Admin friend gave me a trusted link to a Catalina DMG. I learned that restoration from Time Machine was worthless as it created extra accounts and other problems. Had to wipe the drive and start again, and I was charged for that.

After a full month of reinstalling everything I finally had a functional late 2012 Mac Mini running Catalina blazing fast. Now I was ready to attack the 2014 Mac Mini. This time I preserved the fusion drive as it had a super slow, but functioning, Monterey. I’m probably just going to drill it and toss it. Again started with El Capitan and used the Catalina DMG. This time setup was much faster… two weeks, because I had installed tools such as Chronosync and could move massive amounts of data much faster and more reliably.

I now have two screaming fast Intel Mac Minis running Catalina, which was Apple’s last solid macOS release. I will never again allow them to “upgrade” and my Apple world is in containment. I am actively rethinking all of my vendor dependencies and will never again depend upon my Apple devices and will actively avoid any Apple drive formats and in particular Apple Encryption. Apple made it easy to do a lot, but made it very hard to recover from their mistakes.