Mac / OSX geek - how to disable startup services and applications?

[lanwarrior]

I have a mid-2011 MacBook Air running OSX 10.7.5. I recently bought Apple's Ethernet-over-USB adapter. It supposed to be "plug and play", but when I plugged this adapter, nothing happened.

No network connection. Network preferences shows "Cable is unplugged", even though I have it plugged and a network cable to it with working Internet (tested).

HOWEVER: if I reboot to "Safe Boot" (hold Shift while rebooting), the adapter works just fine - have Internet, have network activity, etc.

So something is loading in normal boot that prevent the adapter to work properly. I tried to uninstall every single startup applications under System Preferences --> Users & Group --> Login Items, but no go.

So where else should I look?

In Windows, I can look under Services, Startup folder and even use MSCONFIG. I am blind when it comes ot OSX.

[ocabj]

When you ifconfig and list the network interfaces, do you see the Ethernet-over-USB show up?

[lanwarrior]

When you ifconfig and list the network interfaces, do you see the Ethernet-over-USB show up?

It does..but no IP.

Under System Preferences --> Network, it shows "Cable Unplugged".

[ocabj]

Is IPv4 (TCP stack) configured?

[lanwarrior]

Is IPv4 (TCP stack) configured?

I uninstalled LogMeIn and then manually clicked on "Refresh" under DHCP and voila! Now I got connection.

I am still monitoring the connection, but I am now pretty sure some apps are starting during normal boot up that interfere with the USB Ethernet dongle. It works well in Safe Boot mode.

How do I check startup apps?

[jbj]

Under system preferences, look at accounts. There's a list of startup items. Be careful about turning them off, try rearranging startup order dirst

[imtheomegaman]

system preferences:users&groups:
click on "Login Items", delete problem startup item with - symbol

Also, create a test account and log into that see if you have a problem, if that works, then you may have issues with preferences in your bootup account

[ocabj]

When looking into applications or daemons that start on user login, I check:

~/Library/LaunchAgents
~/Library/LaunchDaemons (usually doesn't exist)

System wide, obviously:

/System/Library/LaunchAgents
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
/System/Library/StartupItems

/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/StartupItems