Inkscape very slow to start up on Windows

I've noticed lately on my Windows 7 x64 PC that Inkscape (v0.48.4) is very slow to startup. Once the window becomes visible it will display "Not responding" in the title bar for a minute or two. Once it gets out of this fit it runs normally and smoothly.

I tried deleting the Inkscape user profile (%APPDATA%\Inkscape) and that helped for a while. But the problem just appeared again within a week.

Solution 1:

Turns out the issue was with the Open Recent History. All of the SVG files I open are stored on network shares and move around quite a bit. Disabling this feature resolved the problem permanently. So, I suspect Inkscape verifies and/or reads various information about the files in the Open Recent History.

• File > Inkscape Preferences (SHIFT+CTRL+P)
• Interface
• Click on Clear list
• Set Maximum documents in Open Recent to 0

Solution 2:

The approach in Drew Chapin's answer made quite a difference on my machine.

Also, startup is slower the more fonts you have installed, according to this forum discusson:

I deactivated all fonts that are almost never get used (approx. 2/3 of them). And now Inkscape starts a lot faster.

I wasn't aware I got so much fonts installed, because I did not install them myself. Probably they were automatically included in the install process of some graphic and text applications I use.