My Macintosh iBook (one of the white ones, CD/DVD drive, 500 MHz G3, 384 MB RAM, Firewire/Dual USB, OS 9.2, not yet 2 yrs old) pauses every time I start it up.
It does the usual startup you’d expect–shows what extensions it’s loading, etc., then draws the desktop and any open windows, etc., then stops. The cursor moves, but the menubar clock doesn’t change, nothing operates, etc., for nearly 5 minutes. (There is nothing in my Startup Items folder, BTW.) Then it comes out of its reverie, and continues as if nothing had happened.
My business partner, I just learned, has the same model computer and the same problem.
Is this common? Anyone know, off the top of their heads, what the cause of this delay could be? I don’t feel like devoting an entire day to turning extensions and control panels on and off one by one if there is a known answer.
Try a command-option-escape during the long pause. If it’s a particular program causing the pause, you may be able to discover its name this way. I did that once to find the culprit behind my mom’s iMac’s habit of randomly dialing their ISP and freezing the computer while it was at it. Turns out the clock was at fault; it was set to sync with a time server whenever it felt like it. I switched it to “manual”, problem solved.
Perhaps it is looking for an IP. Is your ethernet port enabled? Sometimes it waits for an IP from using DHCP and it waits, and waits, and waits. If you are not using your ethernet port, try disabling it.
I’ve seen both Disk Warrior and simply “rebuilding your desktop” fix start-up lags in 9.2. Don’t know if it will solve your particular problem, though.
I have this same problem on my five-year-old iMac. The desktop comes up and I can move the cursor around, but nothing happens until the control bar appears (after a long wait).
I see this all the time with OS 9.x. I’m guessing you normally use your computer on a network. It’s one of a few things:
[ul]If you are using Adobe Type Manager, if you at any point in time selected a font from a server, ATM sits and spins because it can’t find the font.
If you selected a server in the chooser by checking the box instead of just hilighting, your computer is looking for the server. To clear this, look for a folder named “servers” in the system folder and delete it’s contents.
Look in the Extensions Manager control panel for something in the Startup folder. Your computer may be attempting to start an application or task that it can’t find[/ul]Hope this helps.
acsenray, You’ve actually got a different deal going. That is most likely being caused by a bad extension. It’s time for you to do “The Great Extension Hunt”. That involves going into your extension manager, and turning half of your extensions off. Then you reboot. If the problem goes away, you know one of the extensions you just turned off is bed. If it’s still happening, you know one of the extensions you left on is the culprit. You keep on hunting in this manner, eliminating suspects, until only one is left. Occasionally, but not often, it’s a control panel that is the culprit, so if the GEH doesn’t point to any extension, try the GCPH. (Great Control Panel Hunt)
When I open my extensions manager, it gives me a message that there are missing extensions and then it makes a Simpletext file which says –
I have no idea what this is, but I can’t find it in the extensions manager or in the startup items folder. I’ve done a search with Sherlock and can’t find it either. Might it be hidden somehow?