I've had this before. Go to "Startup Disk" in the System Preferences, and make sure that it is not set to Network Startup - it should be set to your normal startup disk.
If it is set to network startup but there is no network, it spends ages trying to find it before giving up and finishing loading the Finder.
Comments
Originally posted by Keda
I have tried ditching the systemUI and finder plist, but no effect.
Have you got lots of fonts? There is a known issue with lots of fonts and taking a long time to start-up.
Originally posted by Keda
[B]10.3.8
After login, the Finder begins to load, but stops w/a Rainbow Cursor for over two minutes. This happens continuously on every login. /B]
How many logins? MacOs X tends to reconfigure "something" in
the background (self optimation). I saw this behavior several times.
After, say, 4-5th startup the bootup time returned to "standard".
Whatever that supposes to mean
Btw, is your mac connected with some ext. devices, network
volumes etc pp?
Does this halt happen on other user accounts too?
How can I see what is going on? Can I trash any Pref files?
Look into your system logs (console.app). There
is always some information available regarding
the entire bootup process. Perhaps from there
you can identify some crawlers.
If it is set to network startup but there is no network, it spends ages trying to find it before giving up and finishing loading the Finder.
Hope this helps!