Very Slow Startup (Launcher+Arcade)

[Cabirus]

Since I have added a whole ADF-collection to my setup, both FS-UAE Launcher and FS-UAE Arcade take a veeeery long time to start. After I click on the respective icon, nothing seems to be happening for at least a minute. After that the program starts and is as responsive as usual.

I guess FS-UAE scans the whole collection with thousands of ADFs on every start, which makes the process extremely slow. Is there a way to speed things up?

Thanks for your help!

[Herbert West]

I have the same problems using 2.9.6dev, but it seems to be very slow only within the last months, before it was working better. Now it's about 3 minutes or even longer. I have a gigantic collection of ADF/WHDLoad files too, but startup process didn't seem as bad just some time ago with the same vs. of FS UAE.

Maybe some WIN10 update causing trouble? Would the newest dev version work better in this regard?

[Dunny]

Same here in Win10. I'll test with Linux later today, but it really is very very slow to start up.

[Goingdown]

I am using Linux, and startup is fast. I have almost all Amiga whdload games (about 3300 files) as well as whole Amiga Gamebase games collection (8700 ADF files). All of my games are zipped.

It takes maybe two seconds to start FS-UAE Launcher or Arcade

I think FS-UAE Launcher does not scan files on startup, but only when you manually launch scan from menu.

[Retro-Nerd]

Works fast enough in Windows 10 for me, only a few seconds using 2.9.7dev2. But i don't have the complete ADF collection. Complete WHDLoad, IPF, Gamebase Amiga and a few CD Images.

[Dunny]

I have complete ADF (TOSEC, including apps, exe's etc), CDROM images, Gamebase and WHDLoad here, about 100GB in total. FS-UAE (Launcher or Arcade) takes more than a minute to start.

Would be nice to get that collection skinned down so that only the files that FS-UAE wants are copied over but I can't find the time atm to rip the needed files out of the database. And besides, I can mount the ADF files directly from inside the emulated Amiga so having a complete set of TOSECs is really nice.

[Herbert West]

I had a short first try at the new dev, and it didn't seem to help with the startup problem. (I didn't have much time experimenting with it so far, so I could still be wrong about this.)

Oddly, at least at my system the startup takes so long only when you start fs uae for the first time in an active WIN10 session. I'm using launchbox with FS-UAE (so FS-UAE process is started and closed with each running Amiga game) and the second and third tries at starting a game are as fast as they should be.

EDIT: I have to correct myself a bit here. When I leave FS UAE for 1 or two hours, do something else on my laptop and restart after that, it again takes ages to load up (2-3 minutes). So "one active WIN10 session" wasn't entirely true.

[Goingdown]

I added all of my Amiga & CDTV & CD32, C64, Amstrad, Sinclair, Nes, Snes, Mastersystem, Megadrive, Atari 7800 & ST, TurboGrafx16 roms and enabled their respective platforms. All of them are zipped. Total of about 500 000 zip files.

Updating file database did took quite a long time (20-40 minutes) but after that, FS-UAE Launcher starts in about two seconds.

I do not see any significant difference on startup times. I have feeling that this is something not related to database size or file amount?

[Cabirus]

I tried removing all ADF-Files from my collection, leaving only the WHDload-games in the database. It still takes more than a minute to start Launcher or Arcade, so it seems not to related to the size of the database. On my second PC it's the same problem.
FS-UAE used to start within a few seconds before, so it seems to be a problem with recent versions only?

[FrodeSolheim]

Just to avoid speculations on that topic; no, FS-UAE does not scan all your files on startup (It only scans the Kickstarts folder to check for kickstart ROMs, etc on startup).

Also, please be clear if it is *FS-UAE* or *FS-UAE Launcher* whichs starts slowly.

There was a problem earlier, I recall, where - due to a bug - the python3 version from MSYS2 waited for a timeout on startup due to trying to look a network path which did not exist. I fixed that particular problem and submitted a patch.

But I will not rule out that a similar problem can exist now because I did update the build environment for 2.9.7dev+. However, that should not affect 2.9.6dev... Also, I have not been able to reproduce the slow startup on my computers. Maybe I'll add some timestamp information to log files so the startup issue can be better debugged.

[FrodeSolheim]

The new test build at http://fs-uae.net/devel/2.9.7dev4/ adds timestamps (elapsed time) to the launcher log file...

[Cabirus]

Here is my fs-uae-launcher.log.txt, hope it helps!

I started the Launcher right after Windows booted, it actually took more than 2 minutes to start. There seems to be no activity by the CPU or HDD during this time, it just seems to hang.

Starting FS-UAE.exe itself takes only 7 seconds by the way...

[Herbert West]

@ FrodeSolheim "Also, please be clear if it is *FS-UAE* or *FS-UAE Launcher* whichs starts slowly."

It's the Launcher.exe with me. I only use this (also as emulator default program in Launchbox), so I actually don't know anything about the other one.

I'll try and do a log myself as soon as I have some time to spare in the next days.

[Herbert West]

Here's a logfile from starting the timestamp launcher the first time.

[Herbert West]

Did the log files give any hints on the weird startup problem? Unfortunately, the slow start issue still remains at my system (could give further specs on it if needed)

[Herbert West]

I finally managed to get it all working again fine without the ultra-slow startup problem. I don't know EXACTLY what was causing the problem, though, as I'll explain more in detail later.

I got a new very powerful PC system newly set up and copied my portable FS UAE folder (that was of course extremely slow to start on the old system) to the new system and to my horror, even in a completely different hardware & software environment, I still had 1,5-2,5 min freezing before the launcher started.

I use the 2.9.7._dev3. Before, when I upgraded a version I simply copy/pasted the whole folder content (custom covers, save states etc.) to the new portable.

So finally I got the idea to try and build a new portable of the 2.9.7._dev3 from scratch, recreating the launcher settings and folder paths manually in the new FS UAE launcher's settings. I didn't add anything else besides a WHDLoad.prefs file.

And now the launcher starts within few seconds again, despite my extremely huge collection being loaded up and recognized by the emulator.

So I actually don't know what exactly was causing the trouble, but it must have been some junk added to my old portable FS UAE folder. I don't need covers etc. anymore from it anyway, as I'm using a frontend with its own picture database by now.

I recommend to anyone experiencing the problem just try to do the same and maybe add the data of the old version (if needed) bit by bit to determine the troublemaker.

I don't know if this works with anyone having thess slowdown problems, but it certainly worked in my case.