Slow start if loading random auto-playlist

[botijo]

Hi,
I have been using MM for some time (MM 4.1.11.1783 at the moment), and I noticed following slow application start with these conditions under a lot of previous versions of MM too:

• Create Auto-Playlist called "Random" with following settings: file size >= 100kB, show at most 3000 MB, sort by Random Album
• Close MM with "Random" Auto-Playlist active
• Start MM

The last step takes a minute or so with a reasonably big collection. The "Random" Auto-Playlist is selected, but the main list is empty. MM sits on top of other windows, and it can still be minimized. But MM does not respond at all.

As you can realize, this is a minor issue. If you close MM with other main view selected, e.g. all the music, it does start up in a few seconds. Switching to the auto-playlist is fast in that case. I assume there is some odd interaction between reading the DB and showing the auto-playlist, something that is calculated more than once in this case. I might be venturing too far - I think the auto-playlist code is not querying if the DB has been read in full first, thus running costly operations more than once.

Thanks for reading so far.

[Lowlander]

Are you also running the startup scan? Have you tried to run File > Maintain Library with complete optimization checked recently?

[botijo]

Hi Lowlander,

I tried both suggestions. Start-up scan has always been disabled for me. I also tried the maintain library command. What I noticed is that a cold start still takes around 1 minute for MM to be responsive. If I close and restart MM, MM responds to user input after a few seconds.

I forgot to mention I use a portable installation on a secondary hard disk.

Let me know if you can think of anything else I can try.

[Peke]

Slow start is directly related to Windows Application prefetch Cache, which is cleared occasionally (Even worse on External removable drives).