Delphi IDE freezes every 5 minutes for one minute

Problem/Question/Abstract:

My Delphi IDE freezes every five or six minutes for approximately 50 seconds. While the IDE is frozen, I can switch to any other application – they all respond normally. The IDE is completely unresponsive during the freeze, for example it does not repaint its windows. After the 50-second-freeze the IDE behaves fine for five minutes until it freezes again. This effect was seen on an installation of the demo version of Delphi 5.

Answer:

As a first guess, I would turn off Delphi Direct. Do you have a permanent Internet connection? Maybe something is configured wrong and Delphi tries repeatedly to connect to www.Borland.com. You can turn off Delphi Direct in Tools | Environment Options

The freeze may occur because you have a bad directory in your (library) search path. Check all directories in your paths and make sure that all drives are actually mapped. The 50-second-freeze sounds like Windows tries to open a network connection. It could also be that a directory/ drive name points to a CD-ROM now and there is no CD in it or it contains a different CD than expected. Trim your paths to what is needed.

You may want to find out what is installed in your IDE that makes it searches your path periodically. I recommend de-activating as many packages as you can. This is done via Components | Packages.

The fact that it is a demo version should not be relevant. Good luck!