Login items launch slowly in Mountain Lion

Question

I recently upgraded from Lion to Mountain Lion.

The first time, I upgraded from an existing system by installing the package directly.

The system boots fast; the time elapsed between pressing the power button and loading the desktop is only 15 seconds, and everything is ready to use, except the auto-login items.

I can see that they've already started up, as they're lighted in the dock, but their icons don't appear in the menu bar, their windows don't appear, and applications like Alfred don't respond to their hotkeys.

After 30 seconds, these applications become responsive and their icons appear in the menu bar.

This problem did not occur when I was using Lion, so I'm not willing to accept this behavior. What is going on? What can I do to resolve this?

Here is my bootlog, captured by Console.app and filtered by keyword "launchd".

Answer 1

I have experienced the exact same problem (eg. Launchbar being active only after around 1min after boot, same for Little Snitch and others) and currently what fixed this for me was to uncheck the "Reopen windows when logging back" button in the Shutdown/Restart boxes. I have not reverted this choice since and icons now appear immediately on the menu bar after boot (and corresponding applications are immediately ready to use).