I too have the same problem. It's almost exactly as Marcus described
it a few messages back. My first load times can be 3 minutes +,
subsequent load times may be 1 second! I've seen this with several
databases, all are between 30-60 MB in size on Firebird 1 and 1.5. I
have 1 GB of RAM, and am running Windows XP. If it's relevant, I'm
using Norton 2003.

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Daniel Rail <daniel@a...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> At August 31, 2003, 22:44, Alan McDonald wrote:
>
> >> The 2 minutes delay is on a 250 Mb database.
> >> The DB i sent you delays for about 20/30 seconds on 1st transaction
> >> after boot.
> >> My servres are reliable also. Never lost a byte in the last 6 years.
> >>
> >> > I have tested your db and there is nothing unusual about the
> >> connection or
> >> > transaction time - so maybe someone else has some ideas.
> >>
> >> Q : Do you experience the 20/30 secs delay after a reboot with the
> >> DB i sent you ?
> >>
>
> > You say you have a lot of disk activity - what RAM do you have on
the server
> > machines?
>
> He did mention that he tried it on a system with 1GB RAM. I would be
> interested what other applications are running alongside Firebird
> (i.e.: anti-virus software, firewall, etc...). If there's an
> anti-virus application running that might be checking the database
> file when it Firebird accesses it the first time, and subsequently the
> disk writes. My clients reported better performance when the
> anti-virus wasn't checking the database file, on access.
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Daniel Rail
> Senior System Engineer
> ACCRA Group Inc. (www.accra.ca)
> ACCRA Med Software Inc. (www.filopto.com)