Slow Ardour start

Hello,
So after a clean install of win11 I reinstalled Ardour and the slow startup was still there.
Ardour took over a minute and a half to start.
Same thing in the settings menu.
For example switching to “flat buttons” took 20 seconds. It was unusable.

I found out that my new midi keyboard Novation Launchkey, which also connects as a USB drive,
is the culprit. I don’t know why, but Ardour constantly monitors this drive and its usage is at 100%.
After turning off this drive, everything is fine.

Any reason why Ardour (Mixbus too) does this?

Did the Novation Launchkey come with some software that you needed to install (and did you install it??)

If so, my guess would be a bug in the Launchkey’s software. Maybe contact Novation and ask if there’s some newer software you could try.

Yes i installed Novation USB drivers (coz of Components app and FW update).
I wrote this just in case someone had similar problems. Turning off this disk (there is a manual etc.) solved everything. But with this disk turned on, only Ardour (Mixbus) had problems, other programs did not. I don’t think it’s a mistake on Novation’s part when only 2 programs on the same basis have a problem with it.

Yes, it’s interesting that you describe that Launchkey as a ‘disk’ or a ‘drive’. I found something on Reddit from someone who had a similar problem where his Launchkey was getting detected as a disk drive and he needed to eject the “drive” before it’d work properly. Here’s what he said:-

“I had an issue with windows where it was seeing my device as a removable drive, I couldn’t do anything with it til I had “ejected” the device from windows, then it detected it as a keyboard. Can’t say this will help, just a thought.”

I saw other reports where the Novation USB driver was causing shutdowns and BSOD issues - so if I were you. I’d definitely be inclined to contact Novation.