I've just changed computers at work and now have a really beefy 64bit Vista os. Currently I'm still slogging through the pile of quirks (like no 64bit drivers for ms access) and I've noticed that my startup time for eclipse is a LOT longer than it was on 32bit Vista. I have almost nothing in my workspace yet, so that knocks out most of the change/rebuild workspace issues. I've used the -clean option a few times and nothing seems to change it.
I'm not running the 64bit version of eclipse, just because it seemed like too much trouble right now with all my other issues getting the machine back into a stable state. It also seems like 64bit eclipse is still pretty rough around the edges since it doesn't appear to have actually been released yet.
Any clues about what I can try to speed things up? Once it's running, it seems to work fine.
TIA
You may give eclipse 64bits a shot (even though you say in your question not using it).
With the latest JDK (6u12) and the latest 3.5M5 eclipse, it does work quite fine.
With my settings, that is ;)