> What happens is this: when ANY version of Firebird (up to 1.5, but
> also the old IB before FB started) under WINDOWS ONLY connects for the
> first time (that is : there are no other users connected) to some
> specific databases (even if fixed,sweeped, backed up & restored), the
> connection can take up to 2 minutes, the disk seems really busy, and
> the CPU shows "Idle :99%".
> Databases size is rather small : from 10 to 40 Mb, there are no
> particular structures, no blobs just some PKs and FKs.
> Actually i had this problem on various DBs ever since 4 years ago
> (when FB was still IB).
> After the first connection is done, all further connections happen in
> a jiffy.
>
> After you close all connections to that DB, and even restart Firebird,
> re-opening the first connection to it OCCASIONALLY takes up the few
> minutes again. It seems that Windows prepares some cache or something
> and the disk keeps busy for 2 minutes. Actually the Task Manager shows
> no particular activity: the CPU and memory size of tasks does not
> change significantly.
>

what connection components are you using?
I have been using IB/FB for some 8 years now and I only ever experienced
this connection slowness in IB4.0/4.2 via the BDE connection. Since then,
using either IBX or IBO, connection times are millisecond (for ODBC) to sub
second for general applicatoin work duration.
Also - are you making just a connection? i.e. database component
active=True/False/True? Or are you making connection plus query (or
conversely) query open forcing connection and query active?
Alan