[Ti] Lengthy Startup Time

[Chris Olson]

On Mar 16, 2005, at 3:51 AM, Wilcox, Jeffrey S. LCDR (VFA37) wrote:

>  One interesting tidbit is that Disk Utility says it's mount point is 
> "/" rather than "volumes/....." like my external drive.

That's because an external drive mounts at /Volumes.  Your internal 
drive containing the root file system mounts at root.  The forward 
slash signifies root for Unix and Unix-like operating systems.

> The SMART features say the drive is "failing" which has me obviously 
> concerned.

Well, I don't know about your drive, but the S.M.A.R.T. status has 
nothing to do with your long Finder startup times.  Finder is trying to 
locate a network resource during startup that's either not available or 
misconfigured.  Turn off your Airport card and unplug the ethernet 
cable, then make a new "Location" with a static IP address, but give 
the machine no address.  Now, log out and log back in.  If Finder 
starts up immediately, then you've just verified what I stated above.

I've found various reasons for it, from people having misconfigured 
automounts in their Startup Items, to a corrupted cache.
--
Chris