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I've had my MBP for a little over a year now. It used to boot up lightenign quick, to the envy of my Windows friends. Not so much anymore.

What can I do to speed up the boot time on my OS X 10.5 MBP?

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4 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Get rid of any accumulated cruft you don't need, e.g.

  • Startup Items (Accounts -> Login Items prefs)

  • Background services such as web server, universal access, bluetooth etc.

  • Dashboard widgets

  • Extra preference panes

And:

  • Make sure you have enough (at least 10%) free space on your HD

  • Defrag

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widgets don't load until you activate dashboard for the first time actually – cobbal Jul 15 '09 at 7:58
Defrag? Don't bother. support.apple.com/kb/HT1375 – Arjan Jul 27 '09 at 21:56
Defrag - do bother if any of the following conditions hold: 1) You're about to bootcamp Windows; 2) Your drive is very full > 80%; 3) You work with large files; 4) You have system slowdown and have tried everything else. – alimack Feb 24 '10 at 15:15
You could also repair your drive with Disk Utility - any corruption will slow bootup. – alimack Feb 24 '10 at 15:23
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up vote 3 down vote

Don't reboot? The only time I actually reboot my Mac laptops is after installing system updates. The rest of the time, I just let them sleep. This has worked well for years. The only time that this isn't an option is if won't be plugged in for days, since it does use a minimal amount of power.

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I'm already there...I only reboot once every several days (like when i am on the road and want to conserve battery.) – Stu Thompson Jul 15 '09 at 13:51
Full ACK, I also just reboot when a system update requires it. – Marc Jul 16 '09 at 7:00
@Stu - instead of rebooting, use hibernate. it is quicker, and your apps will already be launched for you. – RedFilter Sep 25 '09 at 13:41
That causes its own problems - you can see RAM fragmentation if you really leave the Mac on for a long time. Rebooting usually speeds things up a bit. – alimack Feb 24 '10 at 15:16
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up vote 1 down vote

I always do some maintenance every month, which usually involves clearing a few caches etc.

I feel as though it makes things faster, so it may help you too.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html

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up vote 0 down vote

I would recommend you to run Onyx.
See here.

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