Slow boot for macOS High Sierra 10.13.2

thanks Kappy. A lot of info in your post. I will peruse it here shortly. I've always been an early adopter for good or for bad. But for whatever reason, maybe I read something (??), I've been approaching High Sierra slowly. I can't help but imagine that it might well have something to do with APFS. I can't, of course, back that up with any real data. Just a hunch.

I will leave my 2016 Mac on Sierra for a while longer and keep trying things like you suggest with this older machine. I also have noted that when the 2013 Mac boot progress bar reaches a certain spot, it sits there for a good 30 seconds. I have tried to time that and then opened the System Log to see what I see. As you know, lots of info there, much of it confusing to me. I do have Intego security software on both of these machines and I've been wondering if it might have to do with those apps (Virus Barrier, NetBarrier). Maybe...

I will look over what you offered... Hadn't seen you in a while. Thought maybe you retired or took a much needed vacation. Good to see you again.

thanks much

I certainly have heard the arguments over many years about perhaps not needing antivirus software on a Mac but what beyond that prompts the negative thoughts on using say Intego software??? Both my 2013 and my 2016 Mac both have it and both ran smoking fast under Sierra. It's only moving to High Sierra on the 2013 Mac that the boot time (and that's all I've really looked at on that machine so far).

So what, other than money, is running this Intego software costing me???

thanks

Hi leroydouglas,

The 2013 MacBook Pro is SSD and nothing custom. Straight from Apple when I bought it new in 2013. It's my backup/test computer now since I have a new late 2016 touch bar MacBook Pro now (also). I first installed 10.13.(original version of High Sierra) on this 2013 MacBook Pro and it killed the boot time. Took it from around 15 seconds to about 90. I had a clone of that machine and nothing of great importance on it. I reverse cloned it back to Sierra 10.12.6 and it came right back to about a 15 second boot. Then I waited until a couple of updates came out for High Sierra and dived in again. Pretty much the same answer. I could wipe the drive and do a clean install but I do have a few important apps running on this machine and putting them all back on is what consumes mucho time and I'm just not willing to do that right now.

So the answer to your question is this Mac is a 2013 MacBook Pro with the Apple supplied SSD. It booted way fast (15 seconds including time to enter password) under macOS Sierra 10.12.6. But it booted slowly (more like 60 to sometimes as much as 90 seconds) under both 10.13 and 10.13.2 ....

Hi Kappy, thanks for the followup answer. Happy New Year to you, too, by the way.

So tell me more about the anti-malware built into OS X. Is it good??? Does it catch any malware as good as or maybe you would tell me, a lot better than say the Intego software I am using???

thanks

Hmmm, And there were several more responses to this post I started as I kept getting emails, 4 or so, announcing additional responses. But when I click on the links to those new responses, I get,

"Unauthorized

Access to this place or content is restricted. If you think this is a mistake, please contact your administrator or the person who directed you here."

Thats a new one. And when I click on "support" it asks me "which piece of hardware I am having trouble with". Wrong!!! I wanted to talk to a Discussion admin but have no idea how to contact one.

Oh well, some answers lost to the ether I guess.

100% "Stock" from Apple. I just checked it for more certainty and it is a "MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013)

And in the System Report, under Storage it says,

Device Name Apple SSID SD512E

Media Name Apple APFSMedia

Medium Type SSD

Protocol SATA

Internal Yes

Partition Map Type Unknown

And under PCI, it says there are no PCI devices on this computer.

So I can't speak to the PCIe you mentioned above. SATA instead??? But what I report here is right off the System Report. Also I wonder if that "unknown" Partition Map Type might matter????

I just watched that computer as it booted (slowly) and do recall, as I said above, this machine has File Vault turned on so that changes a somewhat the boot process. But my newest machine that also has File Vault turned on but is still back on 10.12 Sierra because of this slow boot issue boots in 15-20 seconds while this one running 10.13 takes at least three times as long.

On this 10.13 Mac we are talking about here, I watch and the progress bar moves across quite briskly to maybe 60% complete and the. it sits there FOREVER, well, maybe not forever but a long time.

Since no clock is available while that is going on but I could still use another device, my phone or other Mac, to determine exact times, say to within a second or so of when this long delay in progress occurs, might I not be able to go look at the System Log at those exact times and see if I can figure out some process that might be in a loop or something???

As I'm sure you know the System Log is not an easy read for someone like me (knows just enough UNIX to be dangerous) so that might be a silly idea but it sure looks like something happens that prompts it to go away for quite a while. Progress bar stops for maybe 40 seconds (I could nail down the times better if needed) and then at the end of that time, you see the screen flash a bit, and that's my clue that now it's gonna go and load. If that long delay was NOT there, the boot of this system would be fine.

My guess is most folks don't turn their machines off maybe ever so they don't care much about boot times. I'm just sort of old school and I turn hardware off when I go to bed or when I leave the house. Just an old habit. But I'm not very willing to put High Sierra on my NOW daily Mac (MacBook Pro, 15 inch, TouchBar, 2016) only to see the boot time go from say 20 seconds to at least 60 seconds if not more. Just doesn't seem like progress.

Your thoughts???

Hi, Better late than never. I input the above command (regarding TRIM) and the output you requested I post is simply,

TRIM Support: Yes

Does that tell you anything???

thanks