You are opening for the first time, but I'm not

Thanks for the reply. I once used mackeeper to undelete some files. However, I cleaned it off the machine manually about 6 months ago because some background process was preventing the machine from sleeping. As I said, I did a complete reinstall from the retail disk.

Do you think the console log would help you to diagnose my problem?

Thanks,

The console log is daunting because I don't recognize most of the entries and they are so variable and often highlight things that are barely worth bothering about. However, I took the time to read line by line and noticed a couple of things I had installed, namely a vodafon mobile broadband dongle and dropbox. So I removed them and inactivated Application enhancer, despite the fact that I have never in many many years of using Unsanity haxies ever traced a problem to their door. I also dumped a corrupted copy of VLC and now the computer is booting in 14 seconds flat and problems are gone.

If I had to guess I would say it was that Vodafone software. Why the **** that would want to get involved with the bootup I can not imagine.

OK, I can concede this point. You need to disable APE when you do an install or update.

I have gradually got used to the lack of Fruitmenu. For my workflow its main function is available on the sidebar. My objection to the sidebar is that it is on every open window and constitutes a waste of space.

HoudaSpot is an excellent remedy for the loss for the shortcut for find-by-file-name in ML.

Does anybody know of a way to replace the functionallity of WindowShade, which is the only OS9.2 feature I still find indispensible?????????????????????????????????

Apple's minimize function is inferior to Windows because the minimized items are tiny due to sharing dock space with all the other things you have in the dock. However, I think it unlikely that Apple will return the functionallity of the dock back to the Apple Menu and provide a Windows-esque minimization function. This is why WindowShade is an actual requirement on an Apple OS, not just a mere whim.