Git Bash is extremely slow on Windows 7 x64

Question

I've been using Git on both Windows and Ubuntu during the development of a small project, frequently flipping back and forth between the two. The issue is that Git Bash consistently becomes slow.

When I say slow, I mean that running cd takes anywhere from 8-25 seconds, running git commands take from 5-20 seconds, and ls can take up to 30 seconds sometimes. Needless to say, this is not fun, not to mention unproductive. I know Git is slower on Windows, but this is ridiculous.

The one solution which has worked--temporarily--for me has been to disable my network connection (as suggested in this answer), start Git Bash, and then reconnect. Sometimes it continues to run quickly for days after doing that, but the performance always degrades eventually. I've trawled through the msysgit discussion group, Stack Overflow, msysgit issue list, etc. on and off for weeks, but I haven't been able to turn up solutions which work.

So far, I've tried:

• Adding Git & project folders to the virus scanner's exclusion list
• Disabling my virus scanner completely (Kaspersky IS 2011)
• Ensuring that Outlook is not running (Outlook 2007)
• Shutting down all other applications
• Running Git Bash as administrator
• Disabling network connection, starting Git Bash, and keeping connection disabled
• Disabling network connection, starting Git Bash, re-enabling connection (works only occasionally)
• Running git gc
• And combinations of the above

I did read that a couple of people had success disabling Bash completion, but ideally I'd like to keep that active. The version of msysgit is 1.7.3.1-preview20101002 & the OS is Windows 7 x64. Running the same things on Linux is, predictably, lightning fast. I would use Linux exclusively, but I need to run stuff in Windows, too (certain applications, testing, etc.).

Has anyone encountered a similar issue? If so, what was the underlying problem and what was the solution (if any)?

This extends beyond just the Git repositories, but just for reference, the repositories I've been using Git with have been pretty small: ~4-50 files maximum.

Answer 1

Use the commands given below to speed up Git significantly on Windows:

$ git config --global core.preloadindex true

Note: core.preloadindex does filesystem operations in parallel to hide latency (update: enabled by default in Git 2.1)

$ git config --global core.fscache true

Note: core.fscache fixes UAC issues so you don't need to run Git as administrator 

$ git config --global gc.auto 256

Note: gc.auto minimizes the number of files in .git/