What makes WPF application startup slow?

Question

I noticed that WPF application startup is sometimes pretty slow. Does anybody know if the the cause is the elements initialization or DLLs loading or something else?

Answer 1

This article on Improving WPF applications startup time should be useful.

Answer 2

The startup time of a WPF Application can be much faster if you use Framework 3.51 and not 3.5 or 3.0. The 3.51 is really an improvement.

Answer 3

What helped me the most from the excellent article that Stuart links to was the XmlSerializer trick. That really shaved up quite a few seconds. Furthermore don't underestimate defragmenting your HD :-)