Q: OS X Lion freezes at login screen + App Store is slow

@Metalizer: Re. needing a sequence of Permission-repairs - I wonder if there is some recursion involved here? I.e., The first repair needs to take effect before the next one can catch other "bad" permissions that still meed to be fixed?

from what I can remember Terry, there was a change in the repair list from the first time to the second; would seem to indicate an overriding  problem to solve before moving on to the next one(s), but apparently this sort of thing is not uncommon – I seem to remember  reading (on other mac forums) about the need for running permission repairs multiple times in certain problems affecting previous versions of OS X

I reset the PRAM on my MBP which also helped to increase and stop the loading screen from freezing/slow to start up! This was also extremely helpful thanks to Carl Berkeley (www.macusersguide.com)

To reset the PRAM you simply:

1. Shut down your Mac.
2. Locate and hold simultaneously the Command (Apple), Option, P, and R keys.
3. Turn on your Mac and hold the key combination before the gray screen appears.
4. Only release the keys after the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for a second time.

http://www.macusersguide.com/2009/05/resetting-pram-nvram-pmu/

Hopefully this works for you guys that are having slow startup issues and the rainbow wheel!

2 years ago I moved from PC to Mac (Snowleopard). What a treat. No more crashes, no more bugs, rock solid and reliable. Finally a computer I could trust with my business. Installed OSX lion - bug after innumerable bug, crash after crash. Just like the old windows experience, pain in the expletive, unreliable, stressful, and time wasting crashes. Anyonne considering a OSX over windows - dont bother, experience is them same. Computers just dont work hassle free, whoever makes them. OSX Lion is Apples Vista. I have experienced both.

@nathan143: I sympathize. If you only run one Mac, Lion Cub is not yet reliable enough. My OEM Lion laptop isn't bad but it still crashes occasionally. In comparison, Snow Leopard is rock-stable and should be useable for a few more years. I have found that Snow Leopard with iCloud can still use iCal, email (both POP and IMAP with Apple's new Mail) and Address Book/Contacts.

I am thinking of making my laptop's HD into a dual-boot and run both Lion and SL - so I can keep "playing" with Lion until it seems mature enough for prime-time. I like Lion's GUI - windows resizeable from any edge or corner. And some of the other GUI tweaks are cool. But, after 3 or 4 weeks of use I finally wsitched back to using Mail's "classic" layout. I'll stick with Snow Leopard on my other machine until the Lion dust settles.

truth be told....I only bought it for the free .me email account and the cloud experience (before it all clouded over); I was also hoping they'd give us some free (albeit limited) hosting, but do we know for sure how the cloud thing unfolds?

(with this version of os x, I still prefer to plug in a mouse, over using the trackpad)

also, I find it somewhat ironic, that with this version of OS X that was all about the gui experience and removing us further from the nuts and bolts, we had to roll up our sleeves to hack, modify system files, launch terminal, enable root etc to get it to work, in any way at all.

Metalizer - this is off-topic - but I couldn't resist. Hear! Hear! The irony - that Lion is "all about the GUI" - does indeed come seeping up through the tiles from the basement. Unfortunately (IMO) it's a "faux pas". The new GUI may be "cool" but unfortunately it gets in my way. Some of the GUI's gesture-language (like ASL - American Sign Language - which, BTW, I regret not having yet learned) is clearly a boon on a mobile device, where mouse and keyboard are at best "crutches", even when well-engineered. The "sign-language" enables a whole new fluency, idiom and culture. Unfortunately, it takes time to learn to use it well. And, across the various manufacturers' mobile devices, there are no "standards".

Suggestions (to Apple et al.)? Remember Bruce Tognazzini - http://www.asktog.com/tog.html? IMHO, Keep gestural languages where they belong - on compact, mobile devices. Voice recognition may be a nice dream but it still needs a human to proof and correct its results. Just watch the sometimes hilarious results of closed-captioning on an evening news program. A decent, full-sized keyboard and "comprehension" is still a requirement, even for non-technical communication.

I have a 15" Mid 2010 Macbook Pro (produced in April) and I had the same problems after installing Lion:

1. Beach ball at login with AGS turned on
2. Sometimes the macbook wouldn't wake up after sleep

So I took my mbp to the Apple Store in Bologna (Italy), and they tried to do a clean Lion install with a new hard disk and new ram, but the problem was still there (10.7.2 + video update).

They also run a specific test for the Apple article TS4088, but my MBP passed it: so no free logic board replacement.

So I refused the replacement (I’d had to pay 600€), and tryed:

1. To repair permissions as root, but it didn’t work
2. To throw AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext in the bin and it worked!! I’m not getting the login beach ball anymore, the system is now very fast, and the mbp always wakes from sleep.

What is strange, is that now the Arabesque screensaver slows every 2 seconds with AGS turned on, while with AGS off sometimes I get visual artifacts in the same screensaver.

Better than nothing...

@Paceymac: Kudos! And thanks for the information! It cuts down the different things to try and should help some of us to get to a solution faster.

Have you tried replacing the Lion copy of the /System/Libraries/Extensions/AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext/Contents/info.pl ist file with the one from Snow Leopard?

I would be curious to know if that provides a "completely satisfactory" fix. If it doesn't, you can always revert to your current configuration.

@Terry Mahoney Thank you for your advice, I'll try to replace the info.plist.

Unfortunately I've deleted the SL backup...I'm going to reinstall SL on a usb hdd. I'll keep you posted.

Terry,

The link to the article on how to enable root is no good - can you check it and repost?

Terry, never mind, it worked after I clicked it again - Probably user error!

I enabled the root account,

shut down

turned on, logged in as root,

ran disk utilities

repaired disk permissions

repeated

shut down

turned on

disk utility-> repair permissions

shut down

turned on - > safe mode

disk utility -> repair permissions

One thing I've noticed, the same files come up as having wrong permissions every time, it's as if the repair isn't repairing anything!

I've got to go try it now and see if it did anything.

@Terry Mahoney

The permissions repair didn't seem to work for me.

I did try moving the whole AppleGraphicsPowerManagement.kext to the trash and that seemed to work.

I don't have an old copy handy that I can look at to compare.

Do you remember what section you found the difference in?

I have a macbook pro 2010 2.4 ghz i5 with nvidia 330 + Intel

from what I remember reading through almost 40 pages here, thats what you have.

Under Macbook Pro 6,2 I see a few vendor ID's

10de (nvidia) device 0a29 (330M)

10de (nvidia) device 0a34 (240M)

8086 (intel) device 0046 (intel graphics)

Did you delete just one value or a whole tree node?

I should also add, I took my MPB to the apple store tonight to follow up with a case I opened over the phone a bit ago.

in the store they ran some basic diagnostics, then ran a specific diagnostic called for by the TS4088 article.

Both tests passed.

then we found a usb disk with a lion install on it and booted from that, and sure enough - no problem - so I think in my case we've ruled out a bad motherboard and are now looking for another cause (and solution!)

@BasementJack: Holy Moses, Jack! Sounds like you've been going at it with a vengeance. Kudos! Don't give up!

From your last few posts, it looks like Trashing the AGPU.kext file works - at least sort of - as it did for me. But I was uncomfortable with something that drastic - since it could, in principle, render my Mac unbootable.

The next thing I did was to look for differences between the Lion and SL versions of the info.plist file  (i.e., the AGPU.kext/Contents/info.plist) I DID find some differences and took a chance on "fixing" them. It worked, and I will cheerfully repost directions if needed. But ... I now think this was "doing it the hard way". It would have been just as effective to replace the Lion version of the ... .kext/Contents/info.plist file withe the corresponding one from your Snow Leopard version.

Is here any way you can recover it? Even if you need to reinstall Snow Leopard (on another drive or partition?) and used Software Update to bring it up to date, before copying it to (say) a flash drive and using it to hammer the Lion one?

Keep us posted.