See if you can get your app to do something VERY early on in the load
process, like display a splash screen.

Some things that may be slowing it down:

1. RAM is already filled to the gills with the spawning Java app. That
all has to be paged out page by page to make room for the new app. See
what happens when you run this on a ram-rich machine.  See what you
can do to reduce your spawner's ram footprint prior to spawn.  In the
DOS days, I would have the spawner roll itself out to disk leaving
just a tiny stub in ram, spawn the child, then roll ram back in.  This
should happen as a side effect of the paging system today, but not as
efficiently since the page out happens gradually.

2. Perhaps the APP is waiting for something.  Is the spawner holding
on to a file?

3. Use a fully qualified *.exe name so there is no need to chase the
path.  Use  an explicit .exe.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
The Java Glossary
http://mindprod.com