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Why does my MacBook take a half hour to boot up?

Here is the situation. If I try to turn on my macbook it takes about a half hour to start. It gets a very faint ticking noise at the top middle of the keyboard and once it gets that it takes about 5 more minutes to completely boot. Screen stays black until the proper boot sequence begins. Once the laptop boots up it runs perfectly. It is fast, for it's age and size and everything works great. If I shut it off it will boot up immediately when I push the power button. If I leave it for more than five minutes it goes back to taking a half hour or so to fire up. Could this be the cmos battery gone? Grasping at straws here.

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Naw the CMOS battery wouldn't cause that... hard drive failing would. Try booting from any other source (backup or optical drive) if it's significantly faster that verifies a HD problem (better backup those important files.

Running AHT could help identify any other hardware problem. . . but, since the problem is intermittent, you might have to run it 2or 3X to find something.

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I already swapped out the harddrive and re-installed snow leopard. There is no clicking noise coming from the harddrive. The ticking noise comes from about where the processor is. I will try another harddrive though just incase.

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Okay I replaced the harddrive with a known good one. I am going to elaborate a little more on the problem.

When I turn on the laptop I get nothing, not even the light comes on. No harddrive spinning, no fan spinning, nothing. This is like that for about a half hour after which the ticking begins. Once that begins the laptop will usually tick for about another 5 to 10 minutes and then the normal start up sequence begins. Once the laptop is running normally the little power light goes out but the laptop runs normal. I'm thinking a exorcism is in order.

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Im gonna throw a few things out there you could test:

RAM (Try booting with different amounts 1 stick / no stick)

Battery / Magsafe (Possible power issue...)

Optical Drive (Try unplugging the connector to the Optical Drive, boot, see if ticking still occurs)

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I think I know the problem, I assume. It won't boot up at all anymore so I'm thinking the motherboard is shot. Time for a new one from Ebay.

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