There was a guy on the Winamp forum having an issue with slow load times and Vista, and now I’m having it, too…
I am having this same problem with my Windows XP system, and after browsing 4 pages of threads on the Winamp forum, so far he is the only one having the same problem. So maybe you people here can help me.
Even though he is on Vista and I am on XP SP2, we both have the same processor family… Core2Duo (his is a T7250 and I am a T5300).
My computer is less than a month old and was preinstalled with XP SP2 from HP/Compaq. I have another AMD Turion64 system, also preinstalled OS from HP/Compaq, and that one is only two months old.
So two new systems, both the same brand, both under two months old, both factory installed OS, both have Spybot from day one.
Winamp 5.5 works fine and loads up quickly on the AMD Turion64 computer. On the Core2Duo computer, Winamp 5.5 takes a LONG time to start up. Player displays on the screen, but remains frozen. If loading via an associated file (song, video, etc.), after a minute or so, the file will begin to play, but the player’s interface will remain frozen for another couple minutes. Eventually it will unclog,and you can use the player normally. Once it is unclogged, you can load more files at a normal speed and even change songs mid-play, and things work fast and flawlessly. The problem is only on loading the program.
The minute you close Winamp and try to reopen it, the problem occurs again. This happens even if you simply run Winamp without using an associated file (opening from start menu).
I’ve done a complete, clean uninstall and re-install twice now, and the problem remains the same.
Everything on the Core2Duo system works fine except for Winamp.
Is this a problem with Core2Duo processors or with Nullsoft’s computer coding ethics? lol
I even removed Winamp fully, reinstalled 5.5, over and over… sam result. Then installed 5.32. Same result.
Shut down every single process I could, leaving it running bare bones. Try to run Winamp, and load time is still taking way too long.
In task manager, CPU peaked at 49, and memory usage peaked at ~63,000, and then suddenly it starts working normal, and CPU drops down to 00 and memory to ~9,150.
All this is with NO song playing, just loading Winamp from the start menu icon.
NOW IN CONTRAST…
On yet a third other system (my AMD Sempron processor w/512 MB of memory, an older system), the CPU shoots to 98 (understandably), but the memory useage peaks at only ~35,000 while Winamp loads, and that only for a moment, before dropping down again. Wimamp takes about 3-5 seconds to load on this older system, whereas the newer dual core intel system it takes minutes to load.
The dual core system has 2 Gigabytes of memory, so my hardware isn’t underpar. This problem has nothing to do with the media files, since this problem occurs even when you try to load Winamp without playing anything.
Both the AMD Notebook and the older AMD Sempron Desktop work fine with Winamp. It’s this Core2Duo system that is having this problem. The Sempron desktop also has the same OS as the other two (Windows XP SP2), and has had anuncountable number of odd applications installed on it over the last couple years.
So what is it about my Core2Duo notebook, only a month or so old, that is causing this issue? It makes no sense 
I really don’t want to switch to WMP, but what choice do I have?
This sucks. I really like the interface of Winamp, and the crossfade feature and playlist input, as well as the particular skin I’ve been using for the past three years (and yes, this problem is happening on barebones skineless as well as skinned).
Maybe this forum can help. Or maybe Nullsoft engineers can pull rears out of arses and write better code? Anyone else having these issues with rediculously slow load times?
