G a f f e r
Prominent Member
So I just installed an SSD into my mbp and even though it was VERY snappy when launching programs, I felt boot times could be improved by clearing out some of the junk being loaded for no reason when the OS started up.
VMWare Fusion:
This program is great, but it does a very bad windows-like thing imo. It decides to launch 4 Kernel Extensions and 6 more daemons when the OS starts up. This is even if you never launch VMWare...it just has been implemented such that these will always run, sucking the life out of any hope for a fast boot up .
Fortunately, I found this post here in which someone with more knowledge than me has altered it's behaviour to now not have these 10 things start up on boot, but to only have them start up on VMWare launch, and shutdown again on VMWare exit (which is what the app should've done in the first place ).
Now for those of you who don't use VMWare Fusion all the time (like me), follow his instructions to the letter and it will work like a charm.
I have also removed VMWare Helper from the startup items (all it does is launch the menubar item I think).
Neither of these things is detrimental to VMWare itself, which still launches and runs fine, but without cluttering up any boot-up or start-up sequences.
Have a delve into some files:
You may find more than a few items in these folders that are unneeded, possible carryovers from previous system migrations, possible crusts from printer installs, external hard drive installers (HP and Seagate especially) etc etc.
/Library/LaunchAgents/ Per-user agents provided by the administrator.
/Library/LaunchDaemons/ System-wide daemons provided by the administrator.
/Library/StartupItems/ System-wide startup items provided by the administrator.
~/Library/LaunchAgents/ Per-user agents provided by the user.
~/Library/StartupItems/ Per-user startup items (folder may not have been created if none present).
I myself found lots of junk because I have gone from 10.1 - 10.2 - Tiger - Snow Leopard - Lion and with each migration, no longer needed daemons and kernels were still getting loaded on..... e.g. old adobe licensors and the newest adobe.switchboard.junk which is completely unnecessary to run Photoshop CS6 .
Old app stuff lurking about?
Won't alter boot times but worth a spring clean - after uninstalling old progs, make sure their preferences are also deleted from
/Library/Application Support
~/Library/Application Support
My boot time has now been cut down to 1/2 what it was previously and it didn't cost me a thing.
P.S. The above also applies to anything else you want to simply spring clean (e.g. Quicktime had about 20 plugins in it's startup folder /Library/QuickTime/ which were pretty much all made obselete by perian.component so I'm now down to only 7 in there (still might delete some old 2009 EVO and MTM components to make that 5)).
VMWare Fusion:
This program is great, but it does a very bad windows-like thing imo. It decides to launch 4 Kernel Extensions and 6 more daemons when the OS starts up. This is even if you never launch VMWare...it just has been implemented such that these will always run, sucking the life out of any hope for a fast boot up .
Fortunately, I found this post here in which someone with more knowledge than me has altered it's behaviour to now not have these 10 things start up on boot, but to only have them start up on VMWare launch, and shutdown again on VMWare exit (which is what the app should've done in the first place ).
Now for those of you who don't use VMWare Fusion all the time (like me), follow his instructions to the letter and it will work like a charm.
I have also removed VMWare Helper from the startup items (all it does is launch the menubar item I think).
Neither of these things is detrimental to VMWare itself, which still launches and runs fine, but without cluttering up any boot-up or start-up sequences.
Have a delve into some files:
You may find more than a few items in these folders that are unneeded, possible carryovers from previous system migrations, possible crusts from printer installs, external hard drive installers (HP and Seagate especially) etc etc.
/Library/LaunchAgents/ Per-user agents provided by the administrator.
/Library/LaunchDaemons/ System-wide daemons provided by the administrator.
/Library/StartupItems/ System-wide startup items provided by the administrator.
~/Library/LaunchAgents/ Per-user agents provided by the user.
~/Library/StartupItems/ Per-user startup items (folder may not have been created if none present).
I myself found lots of junk because I have gone from 10.1 - 10.2 - Tiger - Snow Leopard - Lion and with each migration, no longer needed daemons and kernels were still getting loaded on..... e.g. old adobe licensors and the newest adobe.switchboard.junk which is completely unnecessary to run Photoshop CS6 .
Old app stuff lurking about?
Won't alter boot times but worth a spring clean - after uninstalling old progs, make sure their preferences are also deleted from
/Library/Application Support
~/Library/Application Support
My boot time has now been cut down to 1/2 what it was previously and it didn't cost me a thing.
P.S. The above also applies to anything else you want to simply spring clean (e.g. Quicktime had about 20 plugins in it's startup folder /Library/QuickTime/ which were pretty much all made obselete by perian.component so I'm now down to only 7 in there (still might delete some old 2009 EVO and MTM components to make that 5)).