Five seconds would be great! I also have Norton Security Suite and Windows 7. There must be something in my system that is slowing down the start up. Mathematica appears to run fast enough after start up.

I'm struggling with the same problems in Mathematica 10 while Mathematica 9 runs perfectly smooth. The startup in version 10 takes quite a long time and the application freezes from time to time so that I get no response. The documentation center is also very slow. Probably you're right with your suggestion that the Mathematica FrontEnd is the problem here. Already at the startup of version 10 I receive the message : "Formatting Notebook content"...

I clean my registry regularly thats not the problem with the startup I guess... It's something which is more related to this sort of problem:

"In my Global Options I changed the option "CompatibilityToolWarning" from True to False and Mathematica now opens fresh in a few seconds."

On further investigation the above is incorrect. Global options appear not to be involved.

WRI has changed the entire top-level, start up interface. In the long run this is probably for the better, but in the short run, at least for Windows users, it sows much confusion.

The top FrontEnd Bar is gone and is now incorporated in each notebook. Notebooks are now minimized to the task bar just as other Application windows. (This might be considered a significant improvement.)

On my Windows, the initial start up is always about a minute. But after that, notebooks can be closed and reopened in a few seconds - provided it's done the correct way. The bad way is to right-click the Mathematica icon and open Mathematica 10. The right way is to get a small "Wolfram Mathematica 10" palette to appear. It has "New Notebook", "Open.." and "Quit" buttons on it. If you click "Quit" you will be back to the long initial start up. The problem is to learn how to get that palette to appear! If all notebooks are closed, then one method is to just hover the mouse over the task bar icon. Then several quick "Formatting Notebook Contents" windows appear and then the Mathematica 10 palette. You can quickly open a notebook from there, either from the File menu or the Open button. You can also quickly open a notebook from a library folder while the Mathematica 10 palette is open - but not if it is closed.

Another bit of confusion is when persistent palettes appear and when they don't. They appear only when you have selected a Mathematica notebook - which is probably for the good.

One possible method of operation is to keep the Documentation Center open, but minimized, all the time. Then notebooks will open quickly from most anywhere.

Starting Mathematica and opening notebooks is the top level primary interface. If I were WRI I would consider the fact that this is not quick and intuitive a major problem.

The load time is highly dependent on the memory available and the recent history of the machine. Windows has extensive caching logic. My load time can be 1 minute near startup when all sort of background tasks are getting in gear to 2 seconds just after mathematica has been run. Global options have no effect AFAIK. Benchmark your reload time.

The strange thing is that I never had these problems with V9... V10 however is so slow that I cannot work with it anymore. Independent of how many times I open and close it.

Next possibility is you're short on memory and using swap space (a lot). I'm using 8GB.

Mathematica 10 starts up in a few (<5) seconds on both my computers, a 2013 MacBook Pro (16 Gbytes RAM) and a 2012 iMac (32 Gbytes RAM). Opening notebooks is also very fast, even those with a lot of graphics.

It appears that the problem show up on Windows only.

It would be nice to hear from some Linux users.

No problem on 2 systems, M10 startup in 5 seconds.
Installed M10 (upgraded from M9), accepted all defaults

(1) Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit, i5 desktop, 8GB memory, WD 2 TB HD

(2) Windows 8.1, 64-bit, i7 desktop, 8GB memory, Toshiba 1 TB Hybrid drive (8GB NAND)

Recommendation - if you have less than 8GB upgrade!

Didn't help for me either.

Disable Paging Executive.

{light-bulb} This may be a key change. Referring to the history of my machine, I tried an SSD as the system drive. It proved unstable so I went back to an HD. I copied the system image from SSD to HD. The SSD installation software had flipped to "ON" Disable Paging Executive. It is still on.

In my case 3 seconds in a MacBook 2.8 Ghz 16GB. Pretty fast.

i5 desktop

{
         {"Initializing kernel connections..." -> 0.078},
         {"Initializing cell styles..." -> 0.187},
         {"Initializing fonts..." -> 0.312},
         {"Initializing menus..." -> 0.328},
         {"Initializing defaults notebook..." -> 0.39},
         {"Initializing defaults clipboards..." -> 0.515},
         {"Initializing internal preferences..." -> 0.546},
         {"Initializing kernels..." -> 0.609},
         {"Opening Welcome Screen..." -> 1.389},
         {"Preloading Favorites..." -> 1.981},
         {"Handling CommandLineOptions..." -> 1.981},
         {"Opening Files..." -> 1.981},
         {"Do Startup Action..." -> 2.262},
         {"Closing Splash Screen..." -> 2.262},
         {"Finished" -> 2.262}
        }

Last try at getting this formatted..

For me, V10 start-up time is more than three times longer than V9.

I get this for V9:

and for V10:

Windows 7-64. 8GB, i7.

from developers, two areas to check:

a) Check if shutting the network down makes any difference. I.e., they could either disable the network adapter under Windows, or put wireless connections into airplane mode, or yank the cable for any wired connections.

b) Another possibility would be to check the default printer. If it is on a network, switch to a local printer. "XPS Document Writer" is a safe default, at least for tests.

=====

Does starting the computer in Safe Mode (by holding down F8 as Windows starts) make a difference?

Does resetting 10.0 FE caches by holding down the SHIFT key as Mathematica starts make a difference?

Re developer suggestions (detailed timings taken for all, but only given for last item; note that in all but safe mode startup, though timings say "finished" after ~30s, MMA is not ready to use until about t=70-90s; in safe mode finished = ready to use more or less)

1. Disconnect network: no change (no wifi or BT, physically unplugged ethernet)
2. Set default printer to XPS etc.: no change (default printer was local, but just in case)
3. Hold down shift during startup: no change
4. Startup in safe mode: huge difference, detailed timings follow

In[1]:= FEEvaluate[FEPrivate$StartTimes]//Column
Out[1]= Initializing kernel connections...->0.577
Initializing cell styles...->0.998
Initializing fonts...->1.575
Initializing menus...->1.638
Initializing defaults notebook...->2.23
Initializing defaults clipboards...->2.776
Initializing internal preferences...->2.87
Checking activation...->2.979
Initializing kernels...->3.868
Opening Welcome Screen...->8.751
Preloading Favorites...->10.046
Handling CommandLineOptions...->10.046
Opening Files...->10.046
Do Startup Action...->10.046
Closing Splash Screen...->10.108
Finished->10.108

If developers are interested in detailed system information e.g. an unhackme log to look for commonalities between systems suffering startup slowness, please let us know where to send them (this would be a bad place to dump such logs)

HTH

1. No difference for deactivated network adapters.
2. No difference for setting the default printer as "XPS Document Writer".
3. No difference for holding the shift-key during the MM10 start-up.

But there is big difference when starting MM10 in the safe mode. There is no "Formatting notebook contents" popup and MM10 runs smoothly.

Hi,

thank you very much to everyone in this thread for contributing and sharing your findings.

I am to let you know that we at Wolfram Research are very interested in fixing the slower start-up times in Mathematica 10 by its first bug-fix release.
Unfortunately, except for the prerelease feedback George kindly provided, we had not received any other such reports at the time nor have we been able to reproduce the phenomenon in-house so far.
The more we appreciate all your contributions here.

I have reviewed with our developers everything you have posted in here up to now. This lead us to asking you the following:

1. Does turning off the Welcome Screen (uncheck checkbox in its bottom-left corner) considerably speed up your Mathematica 10's start-up? If so, does then opening the Welcome Screen later-on (menu Help -> Welcome Screen...) take a long time?

2. As a double-check: does starting your Mathematica Local kernel take considerably longer in Mathematica 10 than in Mathematica 9? E.g. evaluate Quit[] in a notebook, then 2+2 and measure the time for the second one to finish.

3. What processes are running on your Windows machine before and after starting Mathematica? If the according list on the Processes tab of your Task Manager fits in its window, please provide us with a screenshot.

For any information you preferred not to post publicly, please feel free to send it to support@wolfram.com with a reference to this Community post, so we can recognize the context of your email right away.

Any help of yours will be highly appreciated and I would like to thank you very much in advance for all efforts!

Peter Fleck
Manager, Wolfram Technology Group

I was having trouble with slow start up, and also the notebook freezing when it was trying to autocomplete symbol/function names (it always froze after entering two letters, seemingly looking up the autocomplete menu, however "strings", numbers etc didn't cause a problem, and evaluation seemed OK).

Unfortunately after several ctrl-shift starts, and quite a few crashes, the kernel wouldn't start because of a licensing error. Furthermore, trying to re-activate the copy via the menus caused a load of notebook error messages. I've had to uninstall it, now looking forward to v10.01!

It's a Win7 laptop, with Intel 4000 HD integrated graphics + NVidia GPU, i7 2.10 GHz CPU, 8GB RAM. Video drivers are up to date. My list of processes are rather too large to fit in a screenshot.

Dear Peter Fleck,

On an HP Desktop, Windows 7:

Normal startup: 62 seconds.

With the Welcome Screen turned off: 27 Seconds

Quit[] and 2+2: Just one or two seconds.

Bringing back up the Welcome Screen from the Help menu: 39 seconds;

With Welcome Screen turned off and Holding down Shift key: 27 Seconds.

Also, there is one other annoying feature. With just a single notebook and clicking it off by the X button the task bar shows no open notebooks but after a few seconds two successive Formatting Notebook Contents windows flash on and off, and then the Wolfram Mathematica 10 window (with New Notebook, Open and Quit buttons.) appears. It happens every time and is a bit annoying. It's like after you shut down, Mathematica won't take no for an answer and opens up again with this window. I can sort of see the logic but it would be much better if the user could open this window on his own and keep it open (but minimized) if he expects to do further work with other notebooks. An equivalent way (for me) is to just open the Documentation center and keep it minimize when not actively using Mathematica.

Turning off the welcome screen also accelerated startup considerably; displaying Welcome from theHelp menu subsequently took ~30s.

Timnigs were (note: MMA not actually ready to use until t=30s, but still much faster (1/3 of time) than with Welcome screen automatically shown)

In[1]:= FEEvaluate[FEPrivate$StartTimes]//Column
Out[1]= Initializing kernel connections...->0.078
Initializing cell styles...->0.218
Initializing fonts...->0.359
Initializing menus...->0.374
Initializing defaults notebook...->0.483
Initializing defaults clipboards...->0.655
Initializing internal preferences...->0.702
Checking activation...->0.764
Initializing kernels...->2.106
Opening Welcome Screen...->3.291
Preloading Favorites...->3.323
Handling CommandLineOptions...->3.323
Opening Files...->3.323
Do Startup Action...->3.323
Closing Splash Screen...->5.273
Finished->5.273

i3, 8GB, WIn 7 Pro 64-bit, onboard Intel graphics

HOWEVER... attempting to enter Quit[] showed a huge lag in bringing up autocomplete; re-attempting, it was fast (obviously cached?) so I tried a different funciton Tan(n[...). It took 30s for the autocomplete options to appear, during which time MMA was using 30-50% of CPU, and was marked as "not responding". This unfortunately means that for me, MMA10 is unusable as it stands :(

Calling up Help on e.g. AbsoluteTiming took 15s - after 5s "formatting notebook" appears and help content appeared at t=15s

a) Yes, approximately.
b) Welcome Screen doesn't get any faster.

I also tried switching of everything except the microsoft services in "msconfig". Unfortunately no speedup.

I have done my best to log exactly what happens when I start 10 both with and without the "Welcome Screen." I need a term for the smaller "New Notebook" "Open..." "Quit" dialog box. I'm going to call it the "Choice Screen" to distinguish it from the "Welcome Screen."

If 10 is supposed to open Welcome Screen, the scrolling text on the spikey stops when it gets to "Opening Welcome Screen." After about 30 seconds a "formatting notebook contents" dialog box appears. After about one more minute a blank notebook frame appears. After about one more minute the blank Welcome Screen is suddenly formatted. At this point, clicking on "new notebook" produces a working new notebook within 5 to 10 seconds, sometimes proceeded by a "formatting notebook contents," sometimes (AFAIKT) not. The complete process takes about 3 to 3.5 minutes. When I close the open notebook, "formatting notebook contents" appears after about 15 seconds, disappears, and then reappears. Then it closes and the Choice Screen appears. If I click "quit," there are no further dialog boxes.

When I try to open the Welcome Screen from an open notebook, I get a "formatting notebook contents" that lasts for about one minute, and then the Welcome Screen appears fully formed.

If 10 is not supposed to start with the Welcome Screen, a notebook appears immediately after "initializing kernels" shows up in the spikey, but the notebook unresponsive for about one minute. During the period, I can't move the window for about 20 seconds. Later I can move the window, but it is unresponsive to input.

When I close the notebook, "formatting notebook contents" appears and disappears twice, but it does seem to be a bit faster than when 10 was supposed to show the Welcome Screen at startup.

I also have a wireless mouse and keyboard, and slow startup. But I don't have an easy replacement at present.

When I tried this, I got this result:

Can I assume that I don't have the controller problem?

Wireless mouse and keyboard (Microsoft wireless desktop receiver 3.1). Win7.

Is the start-up time problem occurring at any time during usage or only after booting the system? During the startup of windows any program is slow. (affected by all sorts of code starting, virus scanner,etc.)

When I stressed the virtual memory of my PC and started M10 then for one time only I saw "Formatting Notebooks."

The result below is after using the system for more than an hour switching between M8 and M10.

{
 {"Initializing kernel connections..." -> 0.078},
 {"Initializing cell styles..." -> 0.219},
 {"Initializing fonts..." -> 0.578},
 {"Initializing menus..." -> 0.593},
 {"Initializing defaults notebook..." -> 0.702},
 {"Initializing defaults clipboards..." -> 0.812},
 {"Initializing internal preferences..." -> 0.843},
 {"Initializing kernels..." -> 0.905},
 {"Opening Welcome Screen..." -> 4.431},
 {"Preloading Favorites..." -> 5.148},
 {"Handling CommandLineOptions..." -> 5.148},
 {"Opening Files..." -> 5.164},
 {"Do Startup Action..." -> 5.164},
 {"Closing Splash Screen..." -> 5.226},
 {"Finished" -> 5.226}
}

I wondered about that a) at PC level and b) MMA level when it came to trying to renable them... but I thought it was worth trying :)

I don't know how MMA is working but when I disabled the controllers I was still able to interact with the system and MMA... of course "disabling" them did not cure the problem (as physically removing the wireless interface did) so maybe they weren't disabled at all... in which case my experience is no guide... but, I expect a reboot would cure any issues, and without MMA to kill the i/f again I doubt you could be locked out forever. It would be nice to get more info if possible. Your risk though!

And again... who knows? ;)

Julian, we're ordering the nearest possible hardware we can find so we can reproduce the issue in-house and make a fix for it. At this time, I am not aware of a fix or workaround for your issue.

Julian,

We're always looking for prerelease testers, please do sign up at prerelease@wolfram.com and mention this post.

The start up time for Mathematica 10 on my Computer (Intel Xeon E31225 3.10 GHz, Windows 7 64bit) is extremely slow. Takes more than a minute to get the Welcome Screen. It is busy all the time with "Formatting Notebook Contents". It occurs only on one of three similar installations in our group. What is causing this problem? How can I fix it? I need a solution! I installed the latest NVIDIA driver, did a Registry Cleanup, removed and reinstalled Mathematica ... with no success

I removed my wireless mouse and receiver, stick, and switched to a wired mouse and keyboard, but it does not improve.

Thomas, I too have trouble with v10.0. I tried removing my USB receiver for my Microsoft wireless mouse, and doing a fresh install of v10.0, but it hasn't helped. I suspect that any conflicting software the USB installed on the first time I used it is still running on the machine.

My observation is that any action that causes Mathematica to open a new 'window', defining 'window' to include a new notebook, the welcome screen, the code completion 'pop up' menu, or the documentation via F1, causes a freeze that sometimes eventually resolves itself, and sometimes results in a crash. I've had to revert to v9.0.1.

Thanks David, the possible USB conflict seems to have been suggested by Wolfram, but it may well be a red herring.

I do have an NVidia GPU, however so far as I'm aware it mainly sits idle, and only runs when a particular application calls it. Maybe it could be the antivirus? I'm running Norton 360. But Norton doesn't raise any warnings about Mathematica. Could it be clashing with Windows' Aero interface or its Windows 8 equivalent? Is anyone running it successfully with Aero? Perhaps it runs OK on the classic 'Windows NT' style desktop that is common in enterprise PCs, where it may have been tested. The problem seems to me be triggered when any new window is opened.

Wild guesses here, but I'm hoping someone can arrive at a solution!

David, thanks for your reply. Your setup seems similar to mine, I have a Lenovo Z580.

So, back to square 1!

Just in case anyone is still following this thread, I tried playing with Windows' settings, turning off programs and services at startup to try and catch any clash. In the process, I corrupted my Windows 7 installation, and had to reinstall everything!

The upside is that MMA 10 is now running very nicely on my machine. As such, I can rule out my USB mouse, Norton 360, Chrome and Google Drive as causing MMA 10 to crash. I've left my graphics drivers on the same version that shipped with my computer, perhaps that was the cause.

I updated my NVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti Drivers (they did appear to update and install) and it made no improvement on my computer. So perhaps this is not a complete solution.

Classify's "Neat Examples" section is weird indeed. In my case, even ten minutes after opening, Mathematica is still having difficulties displaying it. I get the "Formatting notebook contents" dialog every few seconds.

Thanks! I confirm Matthias's method solved the problem in my 10.0.0's documentation for Classify.

ps. My configuration: windows 8.1 x64, NVidia GeForce GT 730M.

No slowdowns here: version 10.0 starts up in a few seconds under CentOS 7.0 64-bit. Core i5 laptop with 8G RAM, Intel graphics, wireless USB mouse.

I installed 10.0.2 on both my Macs, and start-up -- even the first initialization -- is instantaneous. Sorry to learn that this (probably) Windows-specific issue is still present.

Hi Ian,

Thanks for that - I've created a dump file, seems to be too big for the Wolfram website to cope with, but will persevere! Thanks again.

Graham

Since about Version 6 it has taken longer and longer to start up Mathematica. In Version 10 on my HP Pavilion HPE Series it takes a little over a minute. Is this common experience? Is there some way to decrease this time? Does it have any thing to do with virus checking?

I guess that one possible solution is to just leave the Mathematica FrontEnd open all the time, say by keeping the Documentation Center open but minimized.

Earlier this year I installed an SSD. See my 73 minute YouTube SSD install video. Previously, when I used a Seagate 7200 RPM HDD as the system drive, my system was incredibly slow. I had to wait for everything, including the audio drivers, to load. Now, with my SSD, everything loads extremely fast. My Windows 7-64 bit, i7, 16 GB RAM, system boots in about 30 seconds. I haven't timed it in awhile.

I just installed Mathematica 10.0.2 today. I am basically a new Mathematica user, rarely using previous versions 8 and 9. I have not loaded any extras for M10. This fresh install loads the main screen in about 8 seconds, even if I include the time for getting past the Welcome Screen.

I do have Norton Internet Security 2013 running. To make sure NIS does not affect my timings, I take the precaution of pre-loading NIS by right-clicking on the NIS icon in the TaskBar and clicking "Load Norton Internet Security." NIS does not immediately load when booting up and it does take a few seconds.

Also, while I do have a SanDisk Extreme II 480GB SATA 6.0 Gbit/s installed, the motherboard Intel controller is actually a SATA II 3 Gbit/s controller. However, I don't believe this affects my speed by much. See my YouTube video above. My SanDisk Extreme II, which I bought a year ago, is the previous generation. The latest generation is the SanDisk Extreme PRO 480GB SATA 6.0GB/s. I highly recommend anyone replace their HDD with an SSD. You don't realize just how slow HDD's are, especially with demanding Windows 7-64 and later O/S's, until you upgrade to an SSD. Upgrade your RAM to whatever the maximum amount your Windows and motherboard can handle. If you have a 32 bit Windows O/S, your maximum is probably 4 GB. If you have a 64 bit Windows O/S, you are limited by what your motherboard can handle.