I would boot in verbose mode (command + v as soon as the mac is powered on) and see where it's hanging during the boot process. That should help you find the culprit.

that was an awesome tip, do you know if there are any verbose mode after the boot up upon logging in?
of course now that i am trying the command - v on booting, the test machine we have in question only takes seconds to boot up, but is hanging upon user logging in : (

thanks.

No idea if it is related, but I was recently talking with a friend who ran into an issue with LogMeIn on any Mac bound to AD. Those Macs would hang for up to 20 minutes after logging in. Supposedly this is an issue discussed on the LogMeIn forums.

@dyyuan Usually if it hangs on the login screen after you login and it's a blue or white screen (or some color), it means there is some type of corruption in place (user account or OS), or a start up disk that is incredibly full. If you login to a non-AD account on the same Mac, does it hang? If you log into a fresh AD account, does it hang?

In terms of verbose mode for logging in, your best bet is to check out the logs in console.

You might also want to try doing a Safe Boot (hold down Shift at boot) This temporarily disables some stuff from loading that could be causing the slow login.
But, like @perrycj mentions, you will want to test logging in to local accounts (non AD), new AD accounts and a few other scenarios to determine whether this is related to an AD issue. I've seen cases of Active Directory plug-in settings causing long delays at login while a Mac is or is not on the network at the time, so try logging in while disconnected from the network as well as connected and see if there is any significant difference.

yes, we do have logmein installed (but it's on all the computers, so not sure why only some would have issues).
also we did try with non-ad account, as well as new ad accounts, and they all have the same issue.
also, trying to log in with / without network makes no difference...

the part it hangs the most is right after the user type in their login / pw, we get the "beach ball" spinning at that scree for a long time. once it past that screen about 5 min or so, the desktop shows up right away, no blue / white screen etc.

thanks

ok, thanks for the logmein tip!

i just uninstalled it on the test machine that has the issue, and it worked like a charm!

we will try a couple more machines and see if that solves all our issue.

thanks!!!!

Glad to help. Just heard about this issue this past weekend when talking with a friend who's company had been trying to track down the cause for months. He mentioned that now that they knew the program, they found several long threads in the LogMeIn support forums with other people having the same issues. It seems to be some interaction between LogMeIn and the AD link.

Guess I'm just glad that we don't use LogMeIn (or AD for that matter). From my friend, it sounded like a mess to try and troubleshoot.

We had a similar issue in our environment that didn't have logmein installed. Our fix was Startup Disk is set wasn't defaulted to the proper Disk (or wasn't set at all)... Our test was to select the Correct startup disk and tell it to restart. Then we scripted the fix for the rest of our environment.