Permissions problem could rarely be an issue, but is worth giving a try. Select an item and press the – icon to remove them from startup. Select a user and click the ‘Login Items’ tab to find out which applications start up when you log in. To filter out your startup applications, head over to System Preferences and click ‘Users & Groups’. I wouldn’t suggest having too many startup applications. Your startup applications could be a mess if they are resource hungry. Startup applications are those that start along with your Mac (when you log in). You may slightly pull it out if you want to have it connected always. I usually have the adapter connected to Mac so that I don’t miss it. Try restarting your Mac without connecting the card adapter and see if it works. Got an empty ‘microSD to SD card’ adapter connected to your Mac? Pull it out! For weird reasons, an empty SD card (without a microSD connected) freezes up OS X 10.8.4 at the startup. Or this could be for a variety of other reasons – your startup applications, connected devices or apps messing up. Researching online, I found that I may have to re-install with the combo update just to make sure that the update gets installed properly again. But every time my Mac started up and reached the desktop screen, it would freeze for a couple of minutes.
I downloaded the OS X 10.8.4 update lately that covered a lot of bug fixes.
