Lessee...I'll reply here to all the various people who have offered advice:

As it turns out, I downloaded the very newest of the new stuff that I could 
find, and now it seems to take ~1.5 seconds to open, so this is good.

Brent:  Windows is off scanning your registry for all the programs that it 
knows about that have file associations.  That takes a while.  If you do it 
twice (hit cancel then try again) does the second time go faster?

Ned:  As it turns out, my default printer is on my wife's computer, and is 
usually unavailable, so that might be something.

Eddie and Jon:  My squeak.exe seems to be .image resistant!  I tried to 
drag it on there, and it would not go.  I updated my shortcut to not 
specify an image file, and now it very quickly prompts me for which .image 
file to use.  I added a file association so that .image files go to squeak, 
and they seem to load quickly.

Jon:  Ahh, coincidence.  I am using a Dell Inspiron 8100 also.

Julian:  Most likely windows is off looking for a printer, or a network 
connection, or checking the cd drive, or something to be able to show stuff 
for the file open dialog box.  Do you have a bunch of mapped drives which 
are not available, for instance?

Until the problem comes back, I am going to declare this particular problem 
solved.

-andrew

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003 17:29:34 -0500, Brent Vukmer <bvukmer at blackboard.com> 
wrote:

> Maybe this is a Windows issue.  In Win2K, when I click on a file that is 
> not registered with a viewer app., it takes a *long* time for the "choose 
> viewer app" window to come up.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Julian Fitzell [mailto:julian at beta4.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 5:15 PM
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Subject: Re: A sort-of status report, and a newbie cry for help.
>
>
> Jon Hylands wrote:
>> On Wed, 12 Mar 2003 16:25:21 -0500, "Eddie Cottongim"
>> <cottonsqueak at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Dragging the image onto Squeak.exe takes 1.5 seconds.
>>>
>>> Double clicking Squeak.exe and letting it find the image (only one in 
>>> this
>>> directory) takes 16.5 seconds.
>>
>>
>> Interesting -- I get the same 1 second to start, regardless of whether I
>> drag the image onto the VM or just double-click the VM.
>>
>> Later,
>> Jon
>
> I get the same thing as Eddie on Windows.  Whatever Squeak tries to do 
> before opening the file dialog box takes a bloody long time.
>
> Julian
>



-- 
andrew_c_berg at yahoo.com