Slow start- finder unresponsive

Question

I have started having isues with my 27" imac.  It does not get restarted very often and I can't tell you when the last time it was restarted before this week but this is what happens now:
First time or two I restarted it took 3 or 4 minutes to get to the desktop and when I did get to the desktop the finder was unresponsive for at least another 3-4 minutes.  It would finally start working normally.  I disabled all log in items and the time to get to the destop has improved but the unresponsive finder remains.
I have:
booted to a back up (created with carbon copy cloner) and checked the hard drive with disk utility- all comes comes back good, by the way when I booted to the back up drive it too booted slowly and had the unresponsive finder for several minutes
ran apple hardware test and everything came back good
Is there a corrupted plst file or something?  any other suggestions?
Jeff

Answer 1

toolman wrote:
Well, thought I had it but it's back.   I removed all traces of techtool but I still  can not do anything for at least 5 minutes after I get my desk top to show.  This is annoying.
If it will let you, can you open up Activity Monitor during this period and see what's hogging the CPU?
Although this in itself will use some CPU, maybe temporarily set AM as a login item. That way it'll open up as soon as it can.
And check all these
~/Library/LaunchAgents (where ~ is your home folder Library, normally invisible in Lion. Use Go>Go to folder.)
/private/var/run/StartupItems (This one is invisible. Get TinkerTool to show hidden.)
/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/LaunchDaemons