Sudden increase in boot-up time (OSX Lion, MacBook Pro)

Question

Hi all,
I have a 2010 MacBook Pro, with the following specs;
OSX Lion
Intel i7 2.8GHz (dual core)
8GB RAM
256GB SSD HDD
Intel HD graphics
The issue that I have been having is a sudden, unexplained increase in boot-up time. Yesterday and for the past two years, my MBP took circa 15 seconds to boot up, but today it has been taking approximately 5 minutes. I have the latest software update.
My hard drive space is running low; I only have 4GB of space left, could this be a contributing factor?
When I switch on the laptop, it get to the picture of the Apple logo, without the spinning gear below, hangs there for approximately 4 minutes, and then eventually continues to the user log-in screen.

Answer 1

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ If you’re running Mac OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the page that opens.
Step 1
Select "system.log" from the file list. Enter "BOOT_TIME" (without the quotes) in the search box. Note the times of the log messages referring to boot times. Now clear the search box and scroll back in the log to the last boot time when you had the problem. Post the messages logged during the time something abnormal was happening. That time might be before or after the boot.
For example, if the problem is a slow startup taking three minutes, post the messages timestamped within three minutes after the boot time, not before. If the problem is a system crash or freeze, post the messages from before the boot time, when the system was about to crash or was failing to shut down. In either case, please include the BOOT_TIME message at the beginning or the end of the log extract.
Post the log text, please, not a screenshot. If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.
If the log doesn't go back far enough in time, scroll down in the Console file list to /private/var/log/system.log.0.bz2. Search that archived log, and if necessary the older ones below it, for the same information.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Edit it out by search-and-replace in a text editor before posting.
Step 2
Do the same with kernel.log.
Step 3
Still in Console, look under System Diagnostic Reports for crash or panic logs, and post the most recent one, if any. In the interest of privacy, I suggest you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if present (it may not be.) Please don’t post shutdownStall or hang logs — they're very long and not helpful.