[Nobody]

When my G4 1.33 Powerbook boots up:
The desktop wall paper comes up
The spinning beach ball
Then the icons on the top right (Airport, speaker volume, etc...)
Then the grey finder tool bar that the icons are on
Then the hard drive
This seems to take longer then normal, I checked the startup items and the only thing new is iTunes Helper.
The desktop and finder tool bar used to just pop up with all the icons on it, now the icons show up first and I get the beach ball.
Does anyone know what iTunes Helper is? and if deleting it will cause problems with iTunes? I use it and the store often.

[GoCats!]

My Powerbook loads up the same way. I think this changed after one of the 10.3.x updates, I don't remember which. It's only annoying when I'm booting up around a Windows user... it really makes the system seem very slow. Actually, it feels really slow to me too... hopefully Apple will improve boot time in Tiger!

[mr.steevo]

Hi,
I had this problem last month. Do you have a wireless connection? I found that my problem was with the wireless connection taking way too long to set up. As a test try turning off your airport card and log in again. If logging in is quick then you know that the problem has to do with your Mac connecting to the net. Another way to test this is to click on Help. If Help takes longer than it used to with opening then apparently this is also a connection problem. This doesn't mean that you can't connect to the internet, it just takes a while to log on (apparently, I don't know why though). Solution? I reset my Airport Express and now everything is working as before.
Other people have suggested fonts being a problem, so you may want to look into this link.
http://www.thexlab.c...dofontbook.html
s.

[Nobody]

I turned off Airport, shut down my Powerbook, and when I restarted it, boot up was normal, now I just have to leave Airport off until the machine is booted up. This must have something to do with the last software update, because before the update, everything was working fine, I could leave the Airport card on and boot up was normal. I tried resetting my wireless router, but that did not help.

[Dinomac]

You might also try trashing the Finder's Preferences file. This seems to have helped my sleep/wake/beachball/force restart/curse and grumble problem.

The X Lab has many excellent insights to offer for improved performance and behavior of OS X. Great website!

[mr.steevo]

Hi,
One thing you can do when you log on is to hold down the shift key. This causes Airport to bypass its startup and gives you that faster boot. You may want to do that rather than always remembering to turn off your Airport card before logging out. Of course this isn't a fix.
Did you try the font suggestion I mentioned? Give that a go if you haven't because I have heard of others having success with it.
Also, I am wondering when you reset Airport did you do a complete reinstall of Airport software. I have read that there could be something happening with your IP address which causes connection delay.
Check in your start up file system preferences> users> startup items for any unnecessary or over abundance of software loading up. You did mention something about iTunes.
Finally, try zapping your pram http://docs.info.app...tml?artnum=2238
If nothing above works then wipe the drive and reinstall. Ouch!
Hopefully your problem will be fixed with the new OS build, 3.8, which is almost completed.
s.

[Nobody]

Fixed it! I tried the PRAM, no change, BUT, I went to Network Port Configurations and changed the order from:
Internal Modem
Bluetooth
Built-in Ethernet
Airport
To:
Airport
Internal Modem
Bluetooth
Built-in Ethernet
My Powerbook now boots up like it used to, the funny thing is, I did change anything in the Network settings lately.

[mr.steevo]

Hi,
Excellent!
I checked my Port Configuration and they are listed as yours were initally. I don't know why your 'Book works now but I will make a note of it. What made you think to do that? If anyone knows what happened to make this work, please, let us know!
s.