SL startup time in WinXP

I am running firstlook on similar WinXP and Linux computers, the startup time for the Linux box is about 18 seconds (from clicking on the icon to login screen fully loaded). This never changes on the Linux box. My windows box sometimes gets to the login screen in about 20 seconds, but often it takes up to 2 or 3 minutes! Why would this be? Overall I've had better experiences running the "alpha" linux client than the windows client.

It depends on what you've been doing in Windows before you launch SL. Windows has gotten better with memory release over the past versions.......but it ain't there yet. If I start up my computer and go directly to SL it loads really fast (I haven't timed it though). But if I do my email, go through my normal routine of getting my anti virus, anti maleware, and other updates (I hate the auto stuff........I do it all manually) it can take a rather long time to load SL. Not sure it takes 2 mins but it probably does take a minute sometimes.

Hahahahahah..............you should see how long it takes the load SL after a few hours of using GIMP And that works the same after being on SL for a few hours and launching GIMP. Actually everything takes a long time to load after being on SL for a long time..........but if I just let Windows sit for maybe 15 mins everythng gets back to normal. See if your times follow that scenario.............I bet they do.

I've learned to reboot a lot with Windows.

I use XP Home SP2..........totally updated.

Are you using the lastes FL client? THere was a bug of some kind when cleaning out the texture cache in most of the FL client releases that somtimes took minutes to compelte. This SHOULD be fixed in the latest FL release... according to LL anyway. I never ran into that particular bug.

I only use the First Look client anymore. I run it on Windows XP Service Pack 2, so I couldn't compare it to Linux. It seems the speed at which it opens depends on the version. In the latest one it opens and displays in around 10-15 seconds even when I have pushed clear cache, and then reopen it. In other versions it would kind of lag on the detecting hardware and would take more like 20-30 seconds.

Yes, i've been keeping up with the latest version of firstlook on both machines. This latest firstlook does seem to be acting better than previous ones so far.

As far as using the computers, I almost exclusively use my Linux machine, as I am a programmer working from home. The windows machine is there only for gaming. So my Linux computer sees a lot of use, while the other mostly sits there.

Anyway, it does seem that rebooting the WinXP machine daily does really help things. After using Linux as my main machine for almost 7 years now I'm starting to forget how to deal with Windows.

Oh, yes.. the newest versions of FL have really slowed down on the XP machines in my house. Actually, I think it's both the main viewer and the FL that is taking a while to sign in, but FL takes longer. I don't have a Linux machine, but I might try it on my dad's when I visit him, to test the theory.

I was having the same problem on one of my XP boxes, and was baffled, until I noticed that the problem machine was running Kaspersky Antivirus, instead of Symantec like the other machines.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer Kaspersky to anything else, but something about, I dunno, the SL FirstLook cache makes it churn for a couple of minutes frequently (but not always). Turning off AV checkers on all machines reduced load times, but I'm regularly turning off Kasperksy on my dev box.

And yes, I *have* turned off HTTP checking and it still churns, for those of you who use it.

In addition to RAM management problems, Windows has problems with using cache on hard drive. Clearing the cache before logging out (Preferences -> Network) might help on the next startup. If you hear your hard drive cruching a lot during start-up, then Windows is messing with the hard drive cache.