Slow startup since Java 6 update 18

Question

We have a web start app that has worked fine for quite some time. However, it is taking forever to startup on machines running Java 6 Update 18 or later. If I enable the Java console, it starts up rather quickly, and then nothing else happens for a good 20 - 30 seconds. Once our app starts up, it runs fine.
Has anyone else observed similar behavior? I looked through the update 18 release notes, but didn't see anything obvious that would relate to this.

Answer 1

I had exactly the same problem and someone (god-like, I believe) point me in this direction. I was using swingworker.execute() and apparently all swing workers are running on the same thread(?) now.
If this is your problem, try this:
Instead of doing:
GetDataWorker gdw = new GetDataWorker(false);
gdw.execute();
do:
Executor executor = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
executor.execute(new GetDataWorker(false));
Here is the bug report:
http://bugs.sun.com/view_bug.do?bug_id=6880336