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performancems-accesslaunch

Access slow launch from .accdb, but not from within Access application

This just started happening for no good reason I can find.

  • If I launch the MSACCESS.EXE program, then open a database. The database opens within 1 second.
  • If I launch the same database by double-clicking on the .accdb file's icon. It takes about 40 seconds for the Access window to appear, and less than 1 second after that the database opens.

The database is local, and both Access and the DB are on an SSD. The system is an Asus Z97 motherboard, i7-4790K @ 4MHz (not overclocked) with 32gb RAM and about 200gb of free hard disk space.

In both cases, performance after opening is excellent with no issues. It appears it's only the launching of MSACCESS.EXE by double-clicking a .accdb file that is affected. I double-checked the file association for .accdb and it points to the correct executable.

I captured some data with Performance Monitor during the 40-second pause. MSACCESS.EXE is using about 0.4% CPU, doing almost no disk I/O, and there's no network activity.

I've already tried "Compact and Repair" but that had no effect.

This just started happening, and now seems to be affecting Access on ALL .accdb files. They open instantly from within Access but take 40 seconds to open when double-clicked. I haven't installed any new software or Windows updates recently.

Curiously, if I change the .accdb extension to .accdr (runs the db in the client runtime instead of full Access) the database will launch instantly.

What could possibly be going on here? I've searched the web and found some posts having to do with databases on a network share, but that doesn't apply here.

Solution

  • For anyone else encountering this issue, it appears this bug has nothing to do with Access specifically.

    I needed to shutdown the machine, and when I did so, Windows seemed to completely ignore multiple shutdown requests. As I was googling to troubleshoot, after about 10 minutes, the shutdown did finally start. It took another 10 minutes to shutdown.

    After rebooting the slow launch problem no longer occurs, there's only about a 2 second delay, which I assume is just MSACCESS.EXE loading "cold".

    So, the problem is most likely in Windows and not Access.