Comment 29 for bug 1339048

Try to disable the default sound applet and install the "Sound with apps volume" applet. In my case, this reduced the time between login and desktop availability from several minutes to < 10 seconds. You may manually /usr/share/cinnamon/js/misc/interfaces.js from github depending on your distribution - in my case, this file was missing in the cinnamon-common package.

To debug this issue, use the Settings Applet (looks like this: ^ ) --> Error handling (not sure about the english label, i'm using a localised version) --> "Looking glass" --> "Errors". Here, you'll find a log with detailed information how long each applet took for startup.