February 27, 2008 12:37 PM PST

Mac OS X 10.5.2 Special Report: Poor Performance: Slow startups; general sluggishness

by CNET staff

As with previous Mac OS X updates, the first startup after installing Mac OS X 10.5.2 can be abnormally long. If subsequent boots are also inordinately long, as in the case of Robert Smith, see our tutorial on resolving slow startup times.

Robert writes:

"Mac OS X 10.5.2 is booting very very slowly I have MBP 2.2 I tried booting 4 times now and the same thing is happening. I am installing the upgrade on first gen imac hope this is faster to boot up. No, the iMac is also taking its time booting I think it might be time machine. I am not showing external hard drives on any of the two desktops."

You should also check for problematic external devices. Note that we recommend disconnecting all external devices during the update process then connecting them one-by-one after completion to check for potential issues.

Leave a group of devices disconnected during startup and determine whether boot time is normal. Re-attach one or more for the next startup, attempting to isolate the offending device.

One MacFixIt reader writes:

"(I followed MacFixIt's advice and disconnected all devices during the update) First reboot after that to check time took less than 45 seconds. Second reboot after attaching peripherals (firewire drives attached to a firewire hub, bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse, and USB 2.0 7-port hub) had the blue screen for 5 minutes, so by usual process of elimination I determined it was my 17 month old Belkin USB 2.0 Model No. F5U237v1 causing the problem. It was the last thing I expected to cause the problem as I suspected the 4 year old FireWire hub which is still working just fine on 10.5.2. All my USB peripherals directly connected to my late 2006 iMac including my HP PSC 1610 All-In-One also worked fine as do my BlueTooth wireless keyboard and mouse. Actually, all USB peripherals worked when attached to the USB hub after the long delay bootup. The hub had caused no problems with any versions of Tiger I ran it on, or OS 10.5 or 10.5.1. Attached it to a friend's iMac running OS X 10.5.1, and it caused no startup delay."

If devices aren't involved in your problem, see this tutorial.

General slowness right after update is to be expected Note that slow general system responsiveness immediately after installing the update is to be expected as Spotlight re-indexes drives. One this process is done, normal speed should resume.

If it doesn't see our tutorial "Avoiding unresponsiveness/slow-downs in Mac OS X."

Adobe Flash slowness Users are also seeing slowness in the Adobe Flash plug-in when viewing embdedded Web content.

"Just thought I'd add this to the growing list of 10.5.2 problems. After upgrading my 15" PB G4 1.25 to 10.5.2 I started getting a message when trying to load pages in Safari that have flash video. I'm including a screenshot of the error message. ("A script in this movie is causing Adobe Flash Player 9 to run slowly. It it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive.")