Himrich,
I believe that the above posts are likely right on the money. Try them first and you will probably be outa there in a very short time.
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<< The better armed I am the better >>
Hmmm . . .
In the unlikely event that the suggestions above do not get things runnin' snappy, a few things might be helpful for us to know to help you diagnose the problem:
[1] When did this slow startup situation begin? Can it be associated in time with any other events, hardware or software related? Or has the machine always been slow?
[2] It might help if you give us a full description of the machine and some idea of the software and how it is used. E.g., if the user is a fontmeister, it just might make a difference.
[3] Is this a one owner stock machine, or is it an upgraded machine and/or is it second hand? If upgraded, what upgrades have been performed - particularly hard drive and RAM?
[4] Has the machine ever been upgraded with Other World Computing RAM? Any other RAM? Does the RAM have 10ns chips on it, or 8ns chips?
[5] It is likely that this is a Revision 1 B &W rather than a Revision 2. Could you confirm?
[6] Note that firewire can be problematic on the B&Ws. Are the firewire capabilities of the machine in use?
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A few other thoughts, just off the top of my head, many of which you have probably already considered:
[0] Make sure that everything is backed up before you begin. CURRENT back-up.
You do want to keep your friend, don't you?
[1/4] You might try hittin' the CUDA button.
[1/2] Note that there are two firmware upgrades for the B&W. As I recollect, 1.1 was for the IDE B&Ws, and 1.2 was for the more expensive SCSI B&Ws. You are probably dealing with an IDE B&W, but you might as well check. Which firmware upgrade did you attempt?
[1] Check the Start-up Control Panel and make sure that the boot partition is highlighted.
[2] Start-up with all extensions off [Shift button held down during start-up] and see it that makes a difference.
[2 1/2] Consider possible corrupted preferences. Trash the Finder and System and a few other MacOS preferences [if you know what you are doing] - but you probably better leave his other preferences alone, or you could cause a heapa trouble. Empty what trash you can and restart. Then empty trash of the remaining Finder preference.
You have backed everything up, haven't you? ;-)
[3] Disconnect all external peripherals. You might want to take along a different keyboard and mouse - if he is using a ABD keyboard and mouse, take along USB versions, or vice versa. Sometimes a bad peripheral or port can cause weird things to happen.
[4] If nothing else works, using anti-static precautions disconnect all PCI cards and all RAM that you can get away with, just to test. Switch RAM around - different pieces in different slots. Some Macs like largest/fastest RAM in the higher number slots, then work your way down - with other Macs, it doesn't matter.
[5] If the user has upgraded the hard drive on a Rev 1 - well, the XLR8youMac page that Kelley pointed y'all to has the requisite information. Three points that may not be mentioned there:
__[a] people who put two hard drives into Rev 1 machines typically use a standard cable - which may not fit the non-standard Apple design very well. This cable can get crimped, and thereby damaged, and may be a good candidate for replacement.
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if an ATA hard drive has been upgraded in the past, but the IDE ribbon has not, you may be better off with an 80-wire ribbon that with a 40-wire ribbon. Cross-talk. I believe that the original B&Wscame with 40-wire ribbon (I think that was the right era), but I am not certain. New 80-wire IDE ribbons might set you back $3-5 or so.
__[c] If you have a SCSI drive, then you are looking at SCSI voodoo. Tell us whatever you can about it.
[6] An IDE hard drive will likely be limited to around 16 or 18 MB/sec on the internal IDE bus on the B&W. If you put in a $50-70 PCI IDE controller card, you should be able to get a modern IDE hard drive running as high as the 50 MB /sec range.
The SCSI card that came with the more expensive B&Ws is rated for 80 MB/sec. The computer itself can only handle a max of around 56 MB/sec., however, even with modern SCSI drives in RAID 0 configurations.
After you get this specific startup slowdown problem figured out, you may be able to guide this gentleman towards a much faster hard drive / PCI controller combination - depending on what he has now - which will likely speed up startup considerably.
[7] If is comes to it, a clean system reinstall . . .
[8] TechTool Pro has an excellent hardware testing module in Expert mode - but you kinda need to know what you are doing. TTP may be an appropriate purchase if the above things fail. Or, you might want to try it before trying [7], above.
[9] At some point - i.e., when you have everything working - an upgrade to 9.2.2 would likely be in order.
Then he will be at the quintessence of Mac Operating systems (though some may disagree - one might also consider MacOS 8.6 and MacOS 6.0.8)
[10] You might want to check with me before upgrading the RAM on this machine.
That should get you started.
Happy Troubleshootin',
Epaminondas
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ATTO ExpressPro-Tools 2.8x is the best free hard drive benchmarking tool of which I am aware. Ya, I know it says it's for SCSI and Fibre - but, as I recollect, the benchmarking portion works on
IDE drives, as well. You may find ATTO useful in this situation.
To use it, run it from a separate boot drive and go to the menu bar > Utilities > Benchmark Volume.
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[ 02-22-2003, 11:04 PM: Message edited by: Epaminondas ]
