User Name
Password
AppleNova Forums » Genius Bar »

Does the new 15" PowerBook boot up more slowly?


Register Members List Calendar Search FAQ Posting Guidelines
Does the new 15" PowerBook boot up more slowly?
Thread Tools
Dave Marsh
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
 
2005-02-17, 02:23

Hi, I've just received my new 15" PowerBook 1.67GHz laptop and am trying to figure out why it now boots up more slowly than before. Here's my story.

Immediately after receiving the PowerBook, I reformatted it into three partitions of 40GB (Startup), 10GB (Utilities Startup), and 43GB (Data). I reinstalled MacOS X from the installer DVD that came with the Mac, then transferred all my old data over from my 14" iBook during the startup questioning phase to the Startup partition. After completing this phase and rebooting, it started up fine, as expected. However, I noticed that it took more spins of the wheel during the startup process, and attributed that to the copied file layout on the hard drive.

So, I Repaired Permissions, booted up from my external FireWire drive, ran Norton Utilities/Disk Warrior and then defragmented with a new utility called iDefrag (from Germany). Upon completion of this process and rebooting twice, I noted that it now took 25-26 spins of the wheel during the bootup process vice the 15-16 spins it took previously on my 14" iBook.

Now, after logging in, nothing is slow. Everything starts up quickly, so I don't really think anything is amiss, but I'm left wondering. I perform routine maintenance on about 50 Macs at work and have a pretty good feel for whenever anything is not normal. While this Mac is faster than anything we have at work, and we do have a number of newer Al PowerBooks from 867MHz to 1.5GHz in use, all of these machines routinely boot up with the usual 15-16 spins of the wheel.

Initially, I thought it was the new iDefrag utility. I've previously used Speed Disk, but with Symantec dropping their Mac support I've been looking for a suitable replacement. Today I upgraded our 12" Al PowerBook to MacOS 10.3.8 and used the iDefrag tool vice Speed Disk to see if that made a difference. Oddly, it didn't. After rebooting, it displayed the same 15-16 wheel spins as it had following a Speed Disk defragmentation.

Now Speed Disk and iDefrag lay down their files differently. Speed Disk puts the System files and Applications at the start of the disk, and moves the data files to the end, with a large empty block separating them. IDefrag takes advantage of a new feature in Panther that has a hotfiles area on the hard disk. It places the drive and volume information at the start of the disk, skips around a GB of free space, and then starts laying down everything else, prioritizing the order based on an algorithm I know nothing about, but seems to place key application and system files clustered in the faster area of the platter and the less used stuff further out on the platter. When it's done, there are two blank areas on the disk, the first one I mentioned above, and the remaining unused space on the disk following the used area.

Following my first use of iDefrag, I noticed this difference and attributed it to the trade-off of slower startup to faster user application response after logging in versus the faster startup with Speed Disk, and slightly slower user experience following logging in. However, after using iDefrag on the 12" PowerBook today, and noticing NO difference in the startup spin counts between Speed Disk and iDefrag use, I'm left wondering if there's some hardware difference in the new PowerBooks that might be taking more time during startup now. The 12" PowerBook had 640MB of RAM, so I don't think it's that. And, of course, from bus to hard disk, everything on the new PowerBooks is faster.

So, I'm puzzled. Any ideas? Can any other new 15" PowerBook users post how many spins their laptops are taking during the startup process? My next step is to simply run Speed Disk on the new laptop to see if it behaves differently with the new PowerBook vice the older models.

Thanks for listening...
  quote
p-trick
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
 
2005-02-17, 03:26

I don't know whether that's the problem, but you should definitely stop using any defrag-utility. OS X takes care of it by itself, and defrag-utilities just cause trouble.

You might want to check out this (if you haven't already)
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/ma...intenance.html
and maybe try to update the prebindings.
  quote
FFL
Fishhead Family Reunited
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Slightly Off Center
 
2005-02-17, 03:51

Try resetting the NVRAM in Open Transport, then zapping the PRAM, and then re-selecting your Startup partition in the Startup System Preference.

I'm sure you know how to do the above, but the Genius Bar sticky can help if not.

Speaking of the Genius Bar... that's where the thread is headed.

Let us know if you make any progress with the situation.
  quote
Dave Marsh
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
 
2005-02-17, 03:54

Thanks for the reply, and that was a good read. However, I've been performing monthly maintenance on my Macs for years with no ill effects. In fact, following almost any OS X incremental update, I read post-after-post of users complaining something went afoul with the update, when I've had no problems at all.

I'll admit I'm being a bit anal. I just don't like the fact that my files are being written all over the hard disk platter wherever the system can find a free group of blocks. That HAS to slow things down over time. Panther does defragment files <20MB, but does nothing about free space fragmentation. And yes, many will say that today's hard drives are fast enough that it's impossible for a user to notice whether a file's fragmented or not.

My feeling's may be irrational, but I still remember the days when fragmentation was a serious issue.

However, concerning this issue, I'm just trying to figure out why my startup sequence has lengthened by 10 wheel spins, especially when the software on the new partition is virtually identical to the one on the 14" iBook's startup partition. This new PowerBook has faster hardware in every component, so why does the old iBook boot up faster?

I'm NOT complaining about the user experience with this new PowerBook in any way. I love it. I'm just wondering why...

That's why I was asking if any new 15" PowerBook users would post here how many wheel spins they're getting.
  quote
Dave Marsh
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
 
2005-02-18, 02:34

Well, I'm a little deeper into the different startup times between my old 600MHz iBook and my new 1.67GHz PowerBook.

A simple side-by-side startup on battery from push button to login screen, showed the iBook beat the new PowerBook by about 6 seconds. I took this comparison a bit further by copying the system.log files from each machine and comparing them. At this detail level the actual startup differential was actually 29 seconds for the iBook and 35 seconds for the PowerBook. I also noted while watching them boot up that the wheel actually spins faster on the new laptop, so that wasn't as good an indicator as I thought it might be.

The period when the PowerBook fell behind the iBook occurred early in the startup process before the Welcome to Macintosh screen. Here's a brief extract of each log:

PowerBook G4 Startup
15:32:55 Restart
Feb 17 15:32:56 localhost kernel: Jettisoning kernel linker.
Feb 17 15:32:57 localhost kernel: Resetting IOCatalogue.
Feb 17 15:32:59 localhost kernel: Matching service count = 0
Feb 17 15:33:05 localhost kernel: AppleRS232Serial: 0 0 AppleRS232Serial::start - returning false early, Connector or machine incorrect
Feb 17 15:33:14 localhost SystemStarter: Welcome to Macintosh.


iBook G3 Startup
16:12:37 Restart
Feb 17 16:12:38 localhost kernel: Jettisoning kernel linker.
Feb 17 16:12:38 localhost kernel: Resetting IOCatalogue.
Feb 17 16:12:43 localhost kernel: Matching service count = 0
Feb 17 16:12:43 localhost kernel: AppleRS232Serial: 0 0 AppleRS232Serial::start - returning false early, Connector or machine incorrect
Feb 17 16:12:44 localhost SystemStarter: Welcome to Macintosh.


You can see it took the PowerBook 19 seconds to get from the startup to the Welcome to Macintosh screen, but the iBook only 7 seconds, with the gap opening between the Matching Service Count entry and the Welcome to Macintosh screen. It's in this portion that a series of entries for which the PowerBook seeming to be waiting occur:

Feb 17 15:32:59 localhost kernel: Matching service count = 0
Feb 17 15:33:05 localhost kernel: AppleRS232Serial: 0 0 AppleRS232Serial::start - returning false early, Connector or machine incorrect
Feb 17 15:33:06 localhost kernel: [HCIController][start]
Feb 17 15:33:06 localhost kernel: [AppleUSBHCIController][StopIsochPipeRead] - mInt1IsochInPipe = 0 - numReadsPending = 0
Feb 17 15:33:06 localhost kernel: [HCIController][configurePM] ignore = 1
Feb 17 15:33:06 localhost kernel: [HCIController][setPowerState] 1 (ignore=1)
Feb 17 15:33:06 localhost kernel: [HCIController][configurePM] changePowerStateTo(0)
Feb 17 15:33:06 localhost kernel: [HCIController][setPowerState] 0 (ignore=1)
Feb 17 15:33:06 localhost kernel: [HCIController][configurePM] ignore = 0
Feb 17 15:33:06 localhost kernel: [CSRHCIController][start] 1
Feb 17 15:33:14 localhost lookupd[144]: lookupd (version 324.11) starting - Thu Feb 17 15:33:14 2005
Feb 17 15:33:14 localhost SystemStarter: Welcome to Macintosh.


Here's what's happening on the iBook at this stage:

Feb 17 16:12:43 localhost kernel: Matching service count = 0
Feb 17 16:12:43 localhost kernel: AppleRS232Serial: 0 0 AppleRS232Serial::start - returning false early, Connector or machine incorrect
Feb 17 16:12:43 localhost kernel: AirPortFirmware: start Sta f/w download
Feb 17 16:12:43 localhost kernel: obtaining ID
Feb 17 16:12:43 localhost kernel: from Registry
Feb 17 16:12:43 localhost kernel: ATIRage128: using AGP
Feb 17 16:12:44 localhost kernel: UniNEnet: Ethernet address 00:03:93:7a:42:58
Feb 17 16:12:44 localhost kernel: AirPortDriver: Ethernet address 00:30:65:15:a8:d4
Feb 17 16:12:44 localhost kernel: IOFireWireIP: FireWire address 00:03:93:ff:fe:7a:42:58
Feb 17 16:12:44 localhost SystemStarter: Welcome to Macintosh.


The system.log for the iBook has none of that HCIController stuff anywhere, which suggests to me that the iBook doesn't have one.

Well, that's about as far as I can go on this issue. However, I'd still like to hear from any new 15" PowerBook 1.67GHz owners. At least the number of spinning wheels they experience during startup should be comparable. Of course, none of this explains why that 12" PowerBook 867MHz laptop we have at work stills boots up in 16 wheel spins.
  quote
Dave Marsh
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
 
2005-02-18, 02:47

Well folks, I'm now ready to posit a solution to my query. It appears that HCI stuff that's adding 8-9 seconds to the startup cycle is Bluetooth-related. I checked and found it in the System Profiler, since I remembered seeing the HCI acronym before. Neither my old iBook, nor the 12" PowerBook at work, have Bluetooth. I'm guessing now that the PowerBook is waiting to discover a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse before proceeding, since they will certainly have to be detected before using the login screen.

I guess there's a price to be paid for adding all the latest bells and whistles to my new Macintosh.
  quote
FFL
Fishhead Family Reunited
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Slightly Off Center
 
2005-02-18, 04:00

Yes, that makes total sense. Good job tracking it down.

Does turning off your Bluetooth make a difference?
  quote
Mac+
9" monochrome
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: 🇦🇺
 
2005-02-18, 06:57

Dave - great tracking down skills. Although I was unable to contribute, I read this thread as it was added to just out of pure curiosity. I applaud your tenacity!
  quote
Dave Marsh
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
 
2005-02-18, 15:44

Turning off Bluetooth has no impact. I think during the startup process it's all about discovery and loading of system resources. I've noticed at work that all our PowerBooks, regardless of speed, seem to load up in about the same amount of time (assuming same hardware, of course).
  quote
Dave Marsh
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
 
2005-02-18, 16:03

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone. One loose end that still has me puzzled is that my iMac G4 17" loads its HCI stuff in just a second or so. However, I'm using a D-Link plug-in to my keyboard, so Apple may treat its internal Bluetooth differently.
  quote
ShiggyMiyamoto
Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Way south of Maine
Send a message via AIM to ShiggyMiyamoto Send a message via MSN to ShiggyMiyamoto  
2005-02-19, 15:37

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave Marsh
Thanks for the positive feedback everyone. One loose end that still has me puzzled is that my iMac G4 17" loads its HCI stuff in just a second or so. However, I'm using a D-Link plug-in to my keyboard, so Apple may treat its internal Bluetooth differently.
If you've stated this in your initial post, I didn't read it, but how much RAM does your new Allu 15" have? The more RAM a machine has the longer it takes to boot up (as far as I know anyway). That could be a factor. And yeah. You are being anal. lol I don't care how long my comp takes to start up. I just care about it being stable, which it is. I have a 2001 model iBook 600 Mhz with 384 MB of RAM and it takes less than a minute to start up. Maybe... 20 spins.. I've never counted.

Hope that helped...

E-Mail: shiggymiyamoto@gmail.com
Formerly known as Proud iBook Owner 2k2 at AppleInsider.com's Forums
Naruto and Sasuke get it on! http://darwinanime.kicks-ass.net:81/..._to_Naruto.jpg <--- Ohhh YEAH!
  quote
Dave Marsh
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
 
2005-02-19, 18:46

I have 1GB of RAM. Another new PowerBook owner posted on another forum that with 1.5GB RAM he's down to around 14 spins. What was puzzling about his post is that he said disabling Bluetooth reduced the number of startup spins, but not for me. Oh well, moving on...
  quote
Dave Marsh
New Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Sacramento, CA
 
2005-02-25, 00:05

Well, everyone, my problem is solved. It turns out that Virex was damaged when it was transferred from my old iBook to the new PowerBook. Deleting it gave me back my old 10 spins. Apparently, it was doing something in the background that was delaying the startup. Now it's gone and everything is OK. And, the new iDefrag application, which makes use of the hot clustering built into Panther, is working just fine. This is a wrap for me. Thanks for the feedback.
  quote
Posting Rules Navigation
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Post Reply

Forum Jump
Thread Tools
Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Graphic Designer Powerbook (12" or 15"?) JGotham Purchasing Advice 14 2005-02-23 13:00
5.1 Audio with a 15" Powerbook? nmkramer General Discussion 3 2005-02-04 04:23
Ex-Windows User First Powerbook 15" Virgil General Discussion 8 2005-02-03 14:30
15" powerbook battery problem/recall SKMDC Apple Products 7 2004-08-20 12:13
Powerbook won't boot Ryan Genius Bar 9 2004-07-08 12:12


« Previous Thread | Next Thread »

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 08:11.


Powered by vBulletin®
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004 - 2024, AppleNova