You need to distinguish between system startup time and login time.
(This distinction would be clearer if you turned off "auto-login" for your account in the Accounts preferences.)

What you have said above indicates that the system startup time is less than a minute. But then it takes 1.5 minutes for your login.
So you want to investigate why your login is taking so long. You probably have some login items (programs that launch at login) in your Accounts preferences and it is one of these that is causing the delay.
Or maybe there is something else wrong with your user account that is causing the delay.

One way to check on this if it isn't clear immediately what is causing the delay would be to create a new user account and login under that account to see the difference.

Hayne, thanks. I actually have NO apps in the startup items (is that what you are mean?). I am the only user of this computer. I do have the Automatic login checked. I don't use a login password, because it's only using this machine. So what could be causing such a long login? And the rainbow wheel in Photoshop - that's a new thing since I ran DiskWarrior today.......I really appreciate you trying to help me!

What happens if I turned the auto-login off? Will it ask me for a password?
Would it be the same one I use to install anything on the computer - I don't remember creating anotherone for login. I just want to make sure if I turn it off that I will be able to use the machine.

Yes - that is your account password. You use the same password to login as to permit installations that have system-wide effect.
Depending on the Accounts preferences, it may also ask you for your username - so make sure you know what that is. You probably know this - it is what your home folder is named.

It would be a good idea (as I said above) if you created a fresh new user account that you could use for testing. After you log out, try logging in as your regular user. Then log out again and log in as the newly created user.

You will want to test to see if this problem happens for that newly created user account, or if it is just a problem for your original account.

You might try reinstalling that application.
Also try doing Keychain repair (with "Keychain Access" which is under /Applications/Utilities)

Otherwise try the standard troubleshooting suggestions:
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/ (see the "My Mac needs help" section)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...04011205473937
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/faqs.html

Yes - sorry, I forgot that you are using 10.3 - they are called "login items" (which is more correct) in 10.4

Thanks for the replies, hayne.

I just want to make sure I understand everything about my existing and/or newly created account names and passwords. This is what is currently in Accounts in sys. preferences:

My account

my account name here
Admin


Disply Login Window as: List of users (is checked)

Automaticaly log in as: my account name here (is checked)

(everything else is unchecked)



(when I click on my account, on the right side is:):

Name: my account name here

Shortname (greyed out) : my short name here (which is the same as the one next to the house icon in Finder - is that waht you call home folder?)

(under security):

A master password is NOT SET for this computer

FileVault protection is OFF for this account

---------

So if I want to create new account, I will have new account name, new shortname and new password?

I am asking all these (for you) trivial questions because I want to make sure I don't get locked out of my own computer. When I first got it more about 2 years ago and set all this up - I can't remember a thing about how and what I did.

Also, do I have to worry about about FileVault? Is it to protect my stuff from somebody else accessing it?

Thanks,

-alimaj

Yes - your home folder has a house icon.

When you disable the "auto-login" and then restart the Mac, it will come up with a "login window" asking you for your username and password. I think you can use either your long or short username there.

Yes.
Of course, this doesn't affect your existing account. After you add the new account, there will be two user accounts on the Mac and you can choose which one to use on the login window.

By the way, you use the "+" sign in Accounts preferences to create the new account.

FileVault encrypts your whole home folder when you are not logged in. You definitely don't want to enable it. It has been known to sometimes cause problems.

OK, so I disabled the auto-login and restarted the computer. Now the login part took 48 seconds (down from 1.5 minutes), so that seems like a substantial improvement.I also have NO apps in startup items. I expected it to ask me for my name and password, but it didn't. Maybe because "the master password is NOT set on this computer"?
So does it seem now like a normal startup+login time (1'39" total)? It sure went down a bit.
I haven't created another user yet, will do it next and try out things.
Thanks for helping :-)

-alimaj

I don't understand. If you disable auto-login, then you should get to the login window when you restart the computer. And you need to supply your name and password at the login window. What did happen?

Well, I just checked login options and automatic login is ON - hmmm, I turned it off, so I don't know what happened (this is after I restarted with automatic turned off, or so I thought). I am going to do this again now. It is interesting, that the login time was shorter though.
-alimaj

OK, I don't know what happened the first time but now I restarted and it asked me for a name and password. After I did that, it took 1' 25" to login.
I will go back to automatic and check the login time again. I am so confused.

Now, with automatic login, it also took 1' 25". I wonder what I did that time that it took only 48 seconds.

I created new account. set it to "needs no limits" and automatic login ON. I restarted and after typing in name&password it logged in in no time except it looked like a brand new computer with the default desktop and none of my stuff (icons etc.). I freaked out for few secs till I saw I could click the lock to make changes and changed to my admin account. Phew. Now I am back to my original account.

I noticed an option under Security in the new account to check "allow user to administer this account'. Would turning that ON and login in as that user bring me to my original (admin) screen upon restarting?

I see there are neighborhoods on my computer I haven't visited before.

-alimaj

I would suggest that you turn automatic login OFF.

That is correct behavior. This is a brand new account, completely separate from your other account. Your new user has a different set of privileges, different home folder, different desktop, etc.

No, that just makes the new account an "Admin" account, able to escalate his or her privileges if necessary to install certain software, etc.

Trevor

Thanks, Trevor.
So logged in with the new user account I wouldn't be able to access any of my original account's files, apps etc.?

You mean that even though you had "auto-login" set for this new user account, it came up with the login window (asking you for name & password) when you restarted? That is strange.

It seems you don't understand what user accounts are all about.
Each user account (now you have two) has its own "home" folder (where the files created by that user (e.g. MS Word documents) are stored. And each user account has its own separate set of preferences governing how the computer will look and act. By default, the documents etc of userA are not accessible to userB. Thus each user can log in (at different times) and use the computer without affecting the other.

I'm not sure what it was that you changed. It isn't necessary to change anything to switch to a different user account. You just logout (using the Apple menu) and then you get back to the login window where you enter the name and password of the other user you want to log in as.

No. The idea is that some users (those with "admin" status) have more power over the computer than others. E.g. in order to update the OS (Software Update) you need to have "admin" status.
You can have more than one user account on the computer that has "admin" status.

[QUOTE=hayne]You mean that even though you had "auto-login" set for this new user account, it came up with the login window (asking you for name & password) when you restarted? That is strange.


hayne, I am sorry, I might have messed up so probably I had the automatic
login OFF. My apologies.

If you can still stand this, what else do you think I should do about my glitches? I really want to try NOT to erase/install, can't deal with that right now. Should I perhaps run repair disk and/or DW one more time? Or just live with it? It seems like there IS something wrong somewhere. What is really getting in the way is the spinning ball in Photoshop, I spend a lot of time there, also some very slow brushes in Painter. That's new.

You can move or copy files from your account to the Shared folder (it's full path is your boot drive > Users > Shared) to be accessible by any user on the computer. You can also set up permissions on any folder under your control to give other people access to it, including limiting access to read-only, or write-only, or to only certain people or certain groups of people. Permissions are fairly flexible and powerful, and one of the many reasons that OS X and other operating systems based on Unix or similar to Unix are monumentally more secure than Windows.

Also, the fact is that using the default setup of OS X, an admin user can give themselves temporary root privileges from the command line, at which time they can see any file on the computer. That's one reason that you don't let just anyone have an admin account on your computer.

Trevor

Trevor, thank for explaining that. I just never had to deal with another user so never looked into this.