Slow Boot Time - iDeneb 1.4 - AAO-150

What boot times should I be expecting?

I followed this great guide for iDeneb 1.4 - http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=11796 but my boot time is extremely slow and it seems to hang on the blue screen between the apple logo and login screen.

I have a AAO-150 (160GB HDD), followed the instructions with the except of the optional keyboard change and I'm getting the following boot times:

OSX Boot
Elapsed Time: Event
0:00: Darwin Bootloader
0:10: Apple Logo
1:10: Blue screen
5:30: Login screen
5:45: Login complete


OSX Boot with -x
0:00: Darwin Bootloader
0:10: Apple Logo
1:00: Blue screen
1:15: Login screen
1:35: Login complete

Shutting down takes about ~15 sec

Booting Win7 seems to take ~20-30 sec so I can't see this being a HDD problem. Could this be due to the stock wirelesscard?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
buddy

 

boot your system with -v flag and try to determine whats the cause of that.....
I am thinking on your WIFI Atheros card, but i dont really know it, since I am using the DW1390, and it works fast!

 

The -v suggestion is worth a try. You might also check the system log (use the "Console" app in your Applications/Utilities folder) for an suspicious error messages. I ran iAtkos for a while with the stock wifi card and it never affected boot times (but I never tried any of the hacks to enable it).

 

Good suggestions. Last time I booted up with -v, I didn't notice any weird messages on boot-up but I'll have another look. The long pause happens after the boot-up text goes away (seems to be stuck for a while on the blue screen).

I have the stock wireless card still in my AAO but I didn't explicitly set it up. Is there anyway I can not try to detect this on start-up?

I'll give this a try in the next day or two and report back.

Thanks,
buddy

 

Its good to know that I can use the "Console" app to view logs, however I'm not sure how to interpret them (I'm a newbie to macs).

Here's what the log showed:
Mar 2 23:14:19 es-macbook kernel[0]: Insomnia: root returns 0
Mar 2 23:14:19 es-macbook kernel[0]: Insomnia: Message sent to root
Mar 2 23:14:20 es-macbook kernel[0]: display: Not usable
Mar 2 23:18:19 es-macbook /usr/libexec/hidd[36]: Timeout waiting for IOKit to be quiet
Mar 2 23:18:19 es-macbook /usr/libexec/hidd[36]: IOHIDEventQueueCreate: Unable to allocate queue memory from IOHIDSystem. (0x10000003)
Mar 2 23:18:19 es-macbook WindowServer[66]: Unable to create event queue via hidd: (0xe00002bd)
Mar 2 23:18:20 es-macbook loginwindow[33]: Login Window Started Security Agent

I have nothing to compare against so I'm not sure if the above messages are expected. The pause seems to occur between the display: Not usable message and the Timeout waiting for IOKit message. Its very consistent - 4 minutes.

Any thoughts?

 

The problem seems to go away if I eject the 4GB SDHC Class 6 card from the left side (which I'm using for Windows 7 Ready Boost). The slow boot up time also happens if the card is inserted on the right side too.

I'm now seeing more respectable boot up times:
0:01 apple logo
0:15 blue screen
0:20 login screen
0:30 login complete

I don't see the sd card showing up as a drive if I insert it in either card slot.

I took the plunge and decided to remove these and i can leave my SDHC card in with no slowdown in boot times
/System/Library/Extensions/IOSDHCIBlockDevice.ktext
/System/Library/Extensions.ktext


Does iDeneb have support for SDHC cards?

 

Maybe they added that kexts (driver) and it is on release candidate phase, try removing that kext

/System/Library/Extensions/IOSDHCIBlockDevice.kext

and restart, please post results....

 

Yep, removing these two seems to have done the trick:
/System/Library/Extensions/IOSDHCIBlockDevice.ktext (I moved this to another location just in case I needed to restore it).
/System/Library/Extensions.ktext

However I'm still wondering if anyone has gotten their SD/SDHC card reader to work on iDeneb v1.4 ... or any other distro for that matter.

 

So before deleting those kext you always had slow boot and after you deleted those, it booted fast?

It is fixed then? if so, I may post it on my guide, wich AAO model do you have? (for knowledge)

 

Yep, if I left the SDHC card after installing iDeneb v1.4 it was extremely slow to boot. If I removed the card, it would boot fine. Since I use that SDHC card for Windows 7's ReadyBoost, I wanted to be able to keep the card in there, so I removed those kext files and it would boot fine with the SDHC card still in place.

I'm using a AA0-150 (ie. the 160GB HDD) but I suspect this would apply to all AAOs.

 

I put this on the guide, thanks for that!!

 

0:01 to apple, does this include the bios section as this seems very fast, what bios are you using, and what setting do you have in bios ?

 

I have multiple OSes installed, these times aren't exact but the 0:01 is basically after choosing to boot OSX.

 

ahhh,

cheers man, thought that was a bit fast, as mine takes six seconds for bios to boot then the o/s loads.....

thanks

Jakky

 

Hi there,
I got a similar problem with the bootup time...
After pressing Enter on the boot menu it takes about 2minutes 30seconds to get on the "desktop" with all menus..
I already started in verbose mode to check for problems, didnt found anything.
When I boot up in safe mode it takes that long too.

The only thing I have found in the logs is:
5/3/09 12:40:33 PM Dock[111] [QL ERROR] Generator database update takes too long... we will use what we currently have

Has anyone an idea maybe if this could be the problem and if yes, how to solve it

So afther checking for a while I think the problem comes when the graphical interface will be loaded. The first bootscreen is there for about 45 seconds, then it takes about 1 minute 30 more to load the rest.

Cheers
dex

 

Noob Question:

How do u benchmark your startup time? Is there a system log or a daemon that counts the seconds?