CS6 E Bridge Slow to load thumbnails, 'building criteria'

Question

When Bridge opens on the folder it was last opened/closed in, it takes a long time to load, constantly 'building criteria' as if all the images are newly imported. I've searched the forums, have tried all the tweaks and settings, but it's still iceberg slow.  Bridge CS5 is noticeably quicker, as if the cache info is being read immediately. CS6 is behaving as if the cache file has been deleted. It hasn't. I have tried the "flush the cache" to see if maybe it's corrupted. No joy. I have boosted cache size. No joy. I've compacted, automatically exported cache to folders, everything... Nothing seems to fix the snail slowness.
All Adobe updates have been applied.
i7-2600s @2.80GHz
8 gb DDRw ram
Nvidia GeForce GT420 1gb DDR3
6+ tbs hd space.

Answer 1

I could understand the glacial slowness if the beta version had also been so slow. Or if CS5 Bridge was also as slow.
Did not read this whole (long) thread but in general when a previous version of Bridge did work faster then the following this almost certainly is related to your system itself.
While building criteria in filter panel has a mind of its own and especially when opening a second window to fast (when first window is just finished caching or building filter panel) it may take ages. closing this window and open a new one usually succeeds.
However when this always takes a long time the problem seems related to the cache (most Bridge problems are...)
Purging cache using preferences or menu commands is not always the correct solution. Using Bridge CS5 and PS CS6 is also not the perfect solution.
If you can spare the time you should consider a proper back up of custom settings, actions tools, keywords, templates etc. and a complete reinstall.
I don't have the correct info for Windows and searching on Adobe.com isn't easy anymore. Here are some old Knowledge base articles (it's about CS4 but changes are locations are still the same)
http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/move-actions-presets-workspaces-photoshop.html
http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/preference-file-functions-names-locations-1.html
and also read about the Adobe Cleaner Tool and decide if this is an option for you.
http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html
If you decide to reinstall:
Deactivate the software and use the official uninstaller that comes with the application itself and then use the clean tool for Adobe:
Double check if your Cache folder has been deleted (I'm on Mac, don't know the location for Windows but on Mac it is in the user library caches folder)
Install CS6 again. Obvious you have to set your custom preferences again and also need to recache your files but if you have a main folder with many subfolders containing the files just select the main folder and in the menu View select 'show items for subfolders' and let it do it's caching overnight.
In my experience every new version of CS has been faster and more stable (well, except the disaster CS3 version for Bridge...) then its predecessor.