bitcoin GUI is slow to start

[frozen]

Running 64bit version of 0.3.21, I open the bitcoin GUI about once a day, and each time it takes over a minute for the GUI to appear at all.

Why doesn't the GUI first and load the blocks and other data in the background? A modal progress dialog could be used to prevent input, even. The way it works right now unless you tail -F ~/.bitcoin/debug.log, you have no idea why bitcoin isn't starting up. The fact that the load takes over a minute (quad core, 4GB ram), there should be some kind of 'work is being done' indicator.

[bittrader]

Hm....it takes about 6-7 seconds to start on my machine (with the full block chain and everything). My specs: Intel Core 2 Duo T7800 2.6 Ghz, 4.00 GB RAM, 64-bit Win7.

[jme621]

its slow on my machine also, 64bit as well

[frozen]

I just opened it a few minutes ago and it loaded with about 10 seconds. Even though this was considerably faster, it's still slower than starting firefox! Load the GUI first, defer everything else until after the GUI is up, or run both in parallel.

[frozen]

Code:

frozen@planet:~$ tail -F .bitcoin/debug.log 
OS version Linux 2.6.35-27-generic x86_64
System default language is 58 en_US.UTF-8
Language file locale/en_US/LC_MESSAGES/bitcoin.mo (English (U.S.))
Default data directory /home/frozen/.bitcoin
Bound to port 8333
Loading addresses...
dbenv.open strLogDir=/home/frozen/.bitcoin/database strErrorFile=/home/frozen/.bitcoin/db.log
Loaded 69717 addresses
 addresses              3709ms
Loading block index...
LoadBlockIndex(): hashBestChain=0000000000000ef5501a  height=128985
 block index           65013ms
Loading wallet...
nFileVersion = 32100
...

65 seconds to load block index?

[AtlasONo]

Mine is taking more than a minute to load at the moment

[ElectroGeek007]

Mine takes forever and a half to start as well.

[Hawkix]

There should be a progress bar window noticing the user that the program was already started and lengthy operation is in progress.