I am aware that PL 8.9 needs its time to fire up. On my office PC (Ryzen 7-8700, 32 GB, 1TB SSD) it takes appr. 30 sec to come to life - which is fine for me.
But on my laptop (Win 11, Intel Core Ultra 7 - 258V, 32 GB, 1TB SSD) it takes roughly 4 min to start. That is even slower then my previous laptop (Win 11, Intel i7 from 2017, 16 GB). Is it just me or does somebody else experience such a slow startup performance as well?
Cheers, Volker
On my old Windows 10 i7-6700 desktop machine with 24 GB of RAM, startup of PhotoLab 8.9 takes around 12 to 13 seconds until everything is loaded and I can start editing. Iāve been using PhotoLab since PhotoLab 1 and startup is a couple seconds slower in more recent versions than it was years ago when it took only 8-9 seconds.
Are you running other programs at the same time?
Mark
Usually I run Outlook and a browser at the time I start Photolab. But even without Outlook and Firefox or Edge it doesnāt speed up things. It takes roughly 10 sec to display the splash screen, then 30 sec before any text appears on the splash screen and then another 3 min before the thin blue line on the splash shreen is drawn completely.
In contrast Affinity Photo takes in total 6 sec before being completely operational. Even Davinci Resolve is ready under 10 sec.
Is there any log file produced by PL that might give a hint what the cause is?
Hi.
Where are your photos stored?
How is the hierarchy setup?
How many photos are stored on each folder or subfolder?
Look in your āDocumentsā, āDxO PhotoLab 8 logsā subdirectory. Latest startup logs are in DxO.PhotoLab.txt. The DopCor.txt is used only for exports, afaik.
@Wlodek Thanks a lot for pointing me to the log files. Unfortunately I canāt interpret them in a meaningfull way. I guess I have to get a support ticketā¦
Late contribution: I finally installed 8.9 too, and I havenāt noticed anything wrong.
Startup times are the same as 8.8, and my PC is 10 years old (i7 6700K).
If this is ongoing for you, it might be worth deleting what log files you have (while PL is shut down) and then starting it fresh, so you have a brand new log that only shows what is happening during that first startup.
Amongst other things you should see a lot of lines like this:
On the far left is a time/date stamp down to millisecond, showing the exact time any given activity took place.
On the far right is (e.g. ā5 msā) which is how long that activity took in milliseconds to complete.
You may also see errors in the log.
From this you may be able to identify exactly what is taking the most time to achieve - if the program is waiting on a particular part of your system to respond, or is just not functional).
This may help a diagnosis. Of course sending all this into support for them to do it is the option most ought to go with. Weāre expected to be photographers, not software triage experts.
I have this issue too, going back to PL6 or 7 (I canāt remember which). PL takes around 2min 30s to start on my Win 11 laptop (but only a few seconds on my Mac).
There was a thread with another person with this issue some while ago: Starting DxO -> got Loading Time about 7 Minutes
I went through a series of emails with DxO support - check logs, am I running anything else at the same time, update drivers, etc.
After an update PL did suddenly startup in a few seconds, but after a few uses it resorted to taking a couple of minutes again. I now feel the brief improvement startup time was a coincidence with something else happening with my machine, but I still donāt know what.
My machine still takes around 2.5mins for PL to start, Iāve now just accepted to live with itā¦
I know itās for Mac but I just tried PL9.1.1 on my MBP 16" 24GB M4, loading images from a 2TB external Thunderbolt SSD and got a start time of 5 seconds.
This morning I had the chance to compare the log files of three different pc when starting Photolab. One line in the log has raised my attention:
ā2025-10-13 08:47:20.881 | DxO.PhotoLab - 14472 - 1 | ServiceLocator - Info | Profiling DxONET.Extensibility.ServiceLocatorInitializerRegistry.RegisterFolder(ā¦): 27 272 msā
Does is mean PL need 27 sec to āregisterā (whatever that means) the picture folder (which has no subfolders as this is a new laptop) on an internal SSD drive?
The two other logs display values of 2046 and 1837 ms (both are desktop pc, all three run on Win 11 with 32 GB RAM each).
Iām puzzledā¦
Any updates on this? DXO PL is currently the worst offender of slow startup for me. Itās even slower than the Affinity suite.
Cheers.
How long does it take to start up on your machine and what version are you using?
Mark
20 seconds here on a TEN YEARS OLD Windows 11 machine for PL 8.14.
Not bad, considering the age of my PC.
~40s and 8.15.
I mean, even Da Vinci Resolve takes only ~30s, and Affinity takes ~20s.
Cheers.
Hmm. I have used every version of PhotoLab Elite, since Version 1 in late 2017, on the same Windows 10 computer which was recently updated with an RTX 4060 graphics card and a WD Black 2TB SDD. In all those years, and for at least a couple of thousand times, PhotoLab startup has never taken longer then 15 seconds and often less time than that. If it has always opened up that fast for me, and you are also on Windows, the cause of this issue may lie elsewhere.
Mark
Could be. At the same time, Iām just comparing PL with other heavy weight software, regardless of computer configuration.
If youāre ready to engage in constructive discussions instead of dismissing others who donāt have the same experiences as you, Iām all ears. Otherwise, weāre done here.
Cheers.
Iām sorry if I gave you the impression I was dismissing your concerns. That was not my intention. I was just giving you an anecdotal response based on my own long term experience. Clearly you are having an issue, and some interaction is preventing PhotoLab from starting more quickly on your machine. I wish I could help you resolve it. The main point I was trying to make is that even on my old and slow machine PhotoLab is capable of a fast startup. Hopefully others here can provide more useful feedback.
Mark
Thanks. Iām ready to provide more information if requested and told how.
FWIW, Iāve also FilmPack and ViewPoint installed. Not sure if this matters though.
Cheers.
Iām curious why the need to quit the program in the first place?
The only reason I ever quit PL is to force a refresh of the PhotoBrowser, otherwise it often stays running weeks at a time without issue.
Just photo programs alone I currently have running PL 9 w/Film Pack, VueScan, Pixelmator, Photomator, Photos, along with the usual suspects Chrome, Safari, etc. No issues at all.
When I do force a restart of PL it takes about 5 seconds.
This is not a solution for you, I just wanted to provide perspective.
