Odd delay before control panel, programs start in Windows 7

Btw, what about uninstalling SDK?

Sorry for resurrecting this old thread. I'm having the same issues as the original poster.

I also experience some odd delay when opening certain applications
Some applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird, Steam now start with an extra delay. For example if I fire up Firefox I'll notice disk activity for some seconds and then nothing for 20-25 seconds. After that it will resume loading the application and start it as normal. The application responds fast after that so there's no lag whatsoever.

I've tried to uninstall these applications completely and reinstall. I then started them without any addons or profiles that might make it run slow. But I still get these delays. The system is otherwise responsive.
The hardware is fine and I've also tried to completely uninstall my firewall/antivirus/security suite and check if that was the issue, but it wasn't.

As I said this only concerns these three applications (to my knowledge).
Another thing is the OS, it's not Windows 7 but Vista 64 Business. I have made a post on the Vista64 forums but haven't got any reply nor help (this was a few weeks ago).

I've already prepared my computer with the performance toolkit so I can post my logs. If somebody is willing to help. I'd be more than happy to post them. As I said i've posted on the other forum and really hope I can get some help here.

cluberti said:

Post away.

Thank you!

Here's the file:
slow2.7z

I followed the instructions you posted on the first page.
after I ran:

Code:

xperf -on DIAG+DISK_IO_INIT+DRIVERS+FILE_IO+FILE_IO_INIT+FILENAME+NETWORKTRACE+PRIORITY+PROFILE+REGISTRY+SPLIT_IO

I started the one application after another (Firefox, Thunderbird then Steam) letting each one finish starting up before I fired up the others. I had no other applications running besides those from startup.

Also, I checked your system specs and I've got the same motherboard/RAM/processor combination as you. If it helps :)

cluberti said:

Interesting - all of your read time appears to go to a file called "I:\CESAR\STUFF\.DS_Store\Other\capture-2.avi" while opening any of the applications, which is the bulk of the ~70 seconds of time for opening Firefox, ~77

Hmm that's a years old file from when I had an old PowerBook G4 . The file is no longer important, I'm guessing deleting it won't solve the problem(?)

cluberti said:

The applications themselves do not take up more than a few seconds of each of those time periods, so something running within the LocalSystemNetworkRestricted svchost is chewing up disk time (at almost 100%, but doing low-priority reads). Looking closer at the threads doing the read, it's coming from the sysmain.dll thread inside that svchost, which is SuperFetch/ReadyBoost. If you don't have a ReadyBoost key in that machine, try disabling the SuperFetch service for the time being to see if that changes the behavior at all.

Would it help if I rename the C:\windows\prefetch folder?
I'll try disabling the SuperFetch service and see what happens


------EDIT------------------
Disabling SuperFetch and ReadyBoost service didn't help at all

cluberti said:

I didn't think it would, but anything was possible. The other option I didn't specify was to delete the file and run a defrag against all your volumes (with defrag /u /v from an elevated cmd prompt) to update the superfetch information.

Unfortunately that didn't work. I did delete that one big file and ran a defrag. Should I do another trace and see which results it gives now. And post it here?