Internally, we have found that fragmentation at the Windows OS level can have a significant effect on startup - up to 25% of cold start time.
To measure the amount of fragmentation of a given file or directory, there is a Windows tool called CONTIG. The utility is described and can be downloaded from here: Contig - Sysinternals | Microsoft Learn
Alternatively, you could periodically perform defragmentation of your hard drive, which is generally a good idea.
At a minimum, after installation, the system, or at least the Notes program directory, should be defragged.
If you wanted to get a quick rundown of the fragmentation of your Notes installation, you could run it as follows:
Open a command prompt
If you copy CONTIG.EXE to a directory called C:\Tools, and install Notes into C:\Notes, run it as follows:
C:\Tools\Contig C:\Notes /a /s | find “fragments”
Where /a means to analyze. Omitting it will defrag fragmented files
/s means all subdirectories
You can also specify files that match a certain type *.dll
NOTE: The tool uses the same APIs to safely move around parts of the file that the system defragger does.
Doug Conmy
Lotus Notes Lead Architect