Boot takes about 10 minutes. iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017) with latest Big Sur update

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Boot takes about 10 minutes. iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017) with latest Big Sur update

I had to reboot the computer recently and booting up took about 10 minutes.

I thought it had to install some updates or something, so just to be sure, I did a shut-down, wait 5 minutes, power up, and the boot took again around 10 minutes.

I am talking 10 minutes of white bar filling up on black background, so before I got to login and my start items started loading.

Processor: 4.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

Memory: 64 GB 2400 MHz DDR4

The specs don't justify such slow boot times.

What can I do to identify and fix the issue ?

Since I use this machine for work, reinstalling a fresh version of the OS is not really an option.

I am sure there has to be a way to get some logs and see why it takes this long.

Thanks for your answers.

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 11.1

Posted on Feb 27, 2021 5:32 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Old Toad

Level 10

210,189 points

Feb 28, 2021 3:07 PM in response to caseta

Here's one way to try to cull out the left overs from those apps:

1 - boot into Safe Mode by booting with the Shift key held down.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing the following;

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

2 - while in Safe Mode You can check to see if you've removed all of the supporting files by downloading and running the donation ware app Find Any File to search for any files with the application's name or the developer's name in the file name. For example for Virtual Box software you'd do the following search(es):

1 - Name contains virtualbox

Any files that are found can be dragged from the search results window to the Desktop or Trash bin in the Dock for deletion.

FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders, system folders and packages.

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Answer 2

rkaufmann87

Level 10

143,320 points

Feb 28, 2021 9:22 AM in response to caseta

What you need to search for is the developers uninstall instructions, if they do not have any locate the app in your Applications folder and drag them to the Trash and then empty the Trash. Then restart in Safe Mode per the instructions in Use Safe Mode to isolate issues with your Mac (can take up to 10 minutes to restart) and then restart normally.

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Answer 3

rkaufmann87

Level 10

143,320 points

Feb 27, 2021 5:54 PM in response to caseta

You can save you and us a lot of time and effort if you do the following:

Please navigate to the Mac App Store or navigate to www.Etrecheck.com and download the free version of EtreCheck. Once you have you downloaded the app and installed it, please run the report and save it. This report will help us get a good idea what has been installed on your system and help us be able to diagnose what may be wrong.

When you have your report, you can attach it when you reply to this message and we can then review it and help you determine what is needed to get your system running well again.

For instructions on how to download your EtreCheck report and attach it to your reply to this message please click https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250000211

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Answer 4

caseta Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 28, 2021 7:55 PM in response to Old Toad

Thanks for your help so far. I hope you can hang on a little more.

Just updated to 11.2.2. Update took more than 30 min and during it at least a couple of times I had this screen: https://content.nexus.support.com/5b557b9559124044bb566bfc31a09c80/0c69cbe09cd411e88b4db138b807944c.png

After that, I tried to do some cleanup, booted in safe mode, cleaned up some more while in safe mode.

I tried to remove the Paragon stuff, removed both VirtualBox and WMWare Parallels, and a bunch of other stuff that seemed to have been left behind when I deleted some older apps.

EtreCheck report

After that, rebooting in normal mode still took a few minutes, but maybe it was a bit faster than before. But still much slower than I'd expect.

I ran EtreCheck again and attached the report.

I have attached the latest report from EtreCheck.

Would appreciate if you could tell me what else I could do in order to further clean up my system.

I'd be tempted to clean install the OS and then slowly install all the stuff I need, as I need it, but I am actually using this computer for work, and I can't afford to waste all the time that I'd need in order to reinstall everything bit by bit.

I don't think backing up with Time Machine, fresh installing the OS and recovering the backup would work. This is the 3rd iMac I have and each time I imported the stuff from the old one, which is why I found some stuff from 2010 despite this computer being from 2017. Unless I am mistaken, recovering from TimeMachine would bring back all the leftovers from 11 years ago.

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Answer 5

caseta Author

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10 points

Mar 2, 2021 2:26 AM in response to Old Toad

Thanks for the help so far. I have done some more cleanup:

Got the backups working again - though it took 14-16h to backup 65 GB
I have removed some more crap, and now the startup time is ~ 1 min 30 sec
it tells me the performance is "excellent", with the system load a bit above normal - which is probably expected since I am using this machine for development, so I got a couple of IDEs (well, more than a couple), Docker with databases and Elasticsearch running on it, and all other kinds of stuff.

I have attached the latest EtreCheck report.

I hope that my drive isn't failing, cause that would be a major pain.

I do have some more questions, if you don't mind:

What could I use to r/w NTFS drives ? I removed Paragon, though I suspect it was actually Soundflower causing the issues
unfusing the drive sounds like it has the potential for problems and it might cost me lots of time. I was looking at SSDs and I could buy a 2 TB or even 4 TB one, but how easy/hard would it be to replace my current Fusion drive with an SSD ? Either remove both ssd and disk drive and replace them with 1 big SSD, or maybe keep the disk drive for storage.
you mentioned a "backup of the boot drive". I guess that's different from the backups taken by TimeMachine ?
I have a Windows partition created with Bootcamp, and, even if I haven't used it in over 1 year, I'd like to keep it, just in case I need it. By keep it, I mean I'd rather not have to re-create it, reinstall Windows and the stuff that's on it right now.

Thank you again for all your help.

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Answer 6

rkaufmann87

Level 10

143,320 points

Feb 27, 2021 9:16 PM in response to caseta

Your system is quite a mess due to all the "stuff" you have installed on it. You have not 1 but 2 virtualization apps installed, you have Paragon NTFS hack installed and you have a number of system modificaitons.

I would strongly recommend that you uninstall Paragon as it seems to be all over your system and doing who knows what.

Uninstall the virtualization app that you don't use and keep the one you do and then ensure it is up-to-date.

Finally, there is no evidence you backup this computer, if that is correct it is a guarantee you will lose data. At the very least you should be using Time Machine (pre-installed on your machine) to backup.

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Answer 7

caseta Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 28, 2021 8:35 AM in response to rkaufmann87

First, thanks for your reply.

Second, can you please semi-walk me through this ?

I actually try to cleanup my system and keep it clean. Lots of the stuff I see there I have actually uninstalled, but it seems the uninstaller has left a lot of crap behind. Like the Virtual Box.

Speaking of which, what is the 2nd virtualization app that you are talking about ? I presume Virtual Box is the first one.

The Paragon thing is to be able to read and write NTFS drives, which I occasionally need to do. I could try to remove it and look for another solution. If you have any idea, I am listening.

I do have backups, though Time Machine has been fkin up since the 18th of Feb. It normally backs up on a NAS at a different location. And then the NAS itself backs up its RAID0 on an external drive.

First question would be: how to neatly clean up stuff like Virtual Box, for example ?

Thanks.

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Answer 8

caseta Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 28, 2021 9:39 AM in response to rkaufmann87

That's what I do whenever I try to uninstall something: use the uninstalled if provided, remove from Applications folder otherwise.

I have already done this for Virtual Box and most other crap in that report but somehow they're still polluting my system.

So how can I remove these things ? Do I just delete the plist files ?

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Answer 9

Old Toad

Level 10

210,189 points

Mar 1, 2021 10:10 AM in response to caseta

You have removed the files that needed removing.

The report indicates that the SSD portion of your Fusion drive is slower than expected. It may be failing. With that in mind the first order of business would be to make sure you have a current and full backup of your boot drive.

An option would be to get an external Thunderbolt SSD (OWC Envoy Pro EX) and clone your boot drive to it and boot and run from it which would give you speeds comparable to an internal SSD only drive up to 2800 Mbps.

What I would do in your situation would be to get the external Thunderbolt SSD, unfuse the Fusion drive and use the standard HD portion for storage while running off the external SSD.

I have the same model as you but with an SSD only drive and have the following performance according to Etrecheck:

Performance:

System Load: 1.63 (1 min ago) 1.82 (5 min ago) 2.81 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O speed: 1.65 MB/s

File system: 17.18 seconds

Write speed: 1320 MB/s

Read speed: 2655 MB/s

Your performance is:

Performance:

System Load: 2.14 (1 min ago) 1.91 (5 min ago) 1.76 (15 min ago)

Nominal I/O speed: 0.94 MB/s

File system: 25.09 seconds

Write speed: 264 MB/s

Read speed: 1557 MB/s

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Answer 10

Old Toad

Level 10

210,189 points

Mar 2, 2021 10:32 AM in response to caseta

Regarding NTFS if got the following with a quick search:

Best Mac NTFS Software

Paragon NTFS. This is the fastest Mac NTFS program. ...

Tuxera. With Tuxera you will be able to enable NTFS to write on your Mac with ease. ...

Mounty. If you do not want to spend and get the best NTFS for Mac program out there, this is the next best option.

I don't have NTFS so can't comment on them.

Once you get an external SSD up and running you can use it as additional storage making sure it's backed up with Time Machine in case it fails and use it to boot into its Windows partition when needed.

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Answer 11

caseta Author

Level 1

10 points

Feb 27, 2021 6:50 PM in response to rkaufmann87

EtreCheck report

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Answer 12

Boot takes about 10 minutes. iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017) with latest Big Sur update

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