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.
For me, Win 7 x64 MMA V10, it takes about 5 sec to get to the welcome screen. From there, opening a new notebook is almost instantaneous. I run Norton Security Suite, but I don’t know that it’s involved in this.
–David
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.
Very strange.
My 5 seconds is on an HP Z800, Xeon E5530 CPU, 4 cores @ 2.4GHz. 24 Gbytes RAM.
Reasonably fast, but not nearly as fast as the latest Intel processors.
I wonder if your start-up is doing something, like autoloading packages, or some other custom activity.
–David
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”…
Here Mathematica starts up in about 5 seconds too
In[1]:= $Version
Out[1]= "10.0 for Microsoft Windows (64-bit) (June 29, 2014)"
possibly you wish to run a registry cleaner. For years I used to use
but they ceased to exist. This time it found 19 registry errors.
Just to mention it, after a Windows Update day or a switch from one Excel to the next one or from one Visual Studio to the next one, there might remain up to 1300 registry errors which could be cleaned out by a reliable tool of your choice. I have rich colleagues who fear to use a registry cleaner - instead they buy a new computer every couple of years …
Yes, I also get the Formatting Notebook Contents popup.
“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.
Sadly, this doesn’t work for me..
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.
Well. I had this problem in V9 also and it never varied. It didn’t matter if Mathematica had just been run and closed.
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.
There’s a complaint about this on Mma.SE:
http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/54593/mathematica-10-formatting-notebook-contents
There were also complaints in the chatroom, with exactly the same symptoms. This seems to be a problem that is affecting many people on Windows.
Next possibility is you’re short on memory and using swap space (a lot). I’m using 8GB.
I’m using 6GB. Should be enough to run V10. As I said: I never had any problems with V9
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.
I have the same problem, but only on my Windows 8 laptop. Start-up on my Windows 7 desktop is ok (the laptop significantly faster and has more memory than the desktop). I was a Mathematica 10 beta tester, and I saw this problem from the beginning; it took 5 minutes for the first release to start-up. I sent as much information as i could to Wolfram Research, and they made various suggestions about how to speed up the start-up, but none worked. Each release, however, started a little more quickly than the last. I was helped somewhat by holding down both the shift and control keys while starting Mathematica. That returns various settings in your installation back to zero. The WR guys said this sometimes fixes mysterious problems that no one understands.
I have been able to narrow the start-up problem down to the front end. The kernel starts instantly in a dos box. Most strange that it doesn’t show up in Windows 7.
Another observation: the notebook appears almost instantly, but it’s frozen and inert for about one minute.
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!
If the registry is clean, you could use Process Explorer - Sysinternals: www.sysinternals.com during start up of Mathematica in an attempt to catch the performance eater@work
