Very long applet load time with JRE 1.5 - HELP!!

Question

My applet is taking forever to load and init using JRE 1.5.
With JRE 1.4.2_06 it takes a matter of seconds to load and init. The same 1.4.2_06 compiled code running on JRE 1.5 takes ~ 17 minutes!!! Is anyone having a similar experience? I've seen other similar posts related to past plug-in versions, but nothing related to 1.5. The same problem occurs if I compile the code with JDK 1.5 and run with JRE 1.5.
This extreme example happens on a 533 MHz Win2000 pc with 524 MB RAM.
A desktop with 3 GHz P4, 1 GB RAM running WinXP SP2 doesn't have an appeciable delay (a couple seconds).
A laptop with 2.21 GHz AMD Athlon 64, 512 MB RAM running WinXP SP1 takes about 8 seconds to load the applet.
I don't believe it's running yet in the init method during this long wait time. I don't see any print statements, but the basic layout of it is the following:
     public void init()
          applet = this;
          // Setup Look and Feel
          try
               UIManager.setLookAndFeel (UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
          catch (java.lang.ClassNotFoundException e) {System.err.println("Error setting Look and Feel.");}
          catch (javax.swing.UnsupportedLookAndFeelException e) {System.err.println("Error setting Look and Feel.");}
          catch (java.lang.IllegalAccessException e) {System.err.println("Error setting Look and Feel.");}
          catch (java.lang.InstantiationException e) {System.err.println("Error setting Look and Feel.");}
          // Setup background coloring
          HeaderFile.bgcolor5 = UIManager.getColor("Panel.background");  //new Color(212,208,200);
          HeaderFile.bgcolor6 = UIManager.getColor("desktop");
          applet.getContentPane().setBackground(HeaderFile.bgcolor6);
          // Splash screens
          urlSplash = getURL("AesGuiLarge.jpg");
          ImageIcon_Splash = new ImageIcon(getURL("OmniViewSplash_noWords.jpg"));
          ImageIcon_OmniView = new ImageIcon(getURL("OmniView_wordOnly.gif"));
          // Setup Intitialization panel
          final InitializationPanel initPanel = new InitializationPanel();
          contentPane = getContentPane();
          if (preRelease == true)
            Label label = new Label("PRE-RELEASE");
            label.setFont(new Font("SansSerif", Font.BOLD|Font.ITALIC, 11));
             JPanel panel = new JPanel();
               panel.setBackground(Color.yellow);
               panel.add(label);
               contentPane.add(panel, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
          contentPane.add(initPanel, BorderLayout.CENTER);
          Thread initialize = new Thread ()
               public void run()
                        System.out.println("\n***** Initialize thread start *****\n");
          initialize.start();
     }Any help would be appeciated.

Answer 1

I've discovered where the bulk of the delay is coming from.
I have 23 default *.properties files in my project. These files contain the English translation of all displayable strings for Internationalization (I18N). The default naming convention is "text.properties".
For those who don't know I18N, here's a brief synopsis of what happens. ResourceBundles are used to get the strings that are displayed. if your local computer's language/regional settings are English/US, then when the ResourceBundle searches for the file that contains the strings it first looks for a file named text_en_US.properties. If that file is not present or the string is not located, it then looks for a file named text_en.properties. If that file is not present or the string is not located, it then looks for the default file named text.properties. My properties files are all default named.
I used the Java Console tracing capability to see what was happening and this is what I saw. This is happening for every .properties file:
Using JRE 1.4.2_06:
Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax.class with no proxy
Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en.class with no proxy
Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en.properties with no proxy
Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en_US.class with no proxy
Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en_US.properties with no proxy
Using JRE 1.5:
network: Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax.class with proxy=DIRECT
network: Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax.class with cookie "PHPSESSID=e4aad164588f860e495812ec5c52326c"
network: Server http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax.class requesting to set-cookie with "PHPSESSID=e4aad164588f860e495812ec5c52326c; path=/"
network: Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en.class with proxy=DIRECT
network: Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en.class with cookie "PHPSESSID=e4aad164588f860e495812ec5c52326c"
network: Server http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en.class requesting to set-cookie with "PHPSESSID=e4aad164588f860e495812ec5c52326c; path=/"
network: Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en.properties with proxy=DIRECT
network: Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en.properties with cookie "PHPSESSID=e4aad164588f860e495812ec5c52326c"
network: Server http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en.properties requesting to set-cookie with "PHPSESSID=e4aad164588f860e495812ec5c52326c; path=/"
network: Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en_US.class with proxy=DIRECT
network: Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en_US.class with cookie "PHPSESSID=e4aad164588f860e495812ec5c52326c"
network: Server http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en_US.class requesting to set-cookie with "PHPSESSID=e4aad164588f860e495812ec5c52326c; path=/"
network: Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en_US.properties with proxy=DIRECT
network: Connecting http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en_US.properties with cookie "PHPSESSID=e4aad164588f860e495812ec5c52326c"
network: Server http://dummy.com/demos/AES/1_4_2_06/fax_en_US.properties requesting to set-cookie with "PHPSESSID=e4aad164588f860e495812ec5c52326c; path=/"
None of the files in these traces exist. JRE 1.5 is attempting to set cookies on each of these non-existent files. There is approximately a 5-8 second delay that occurs before each attempt times out. So for each of my 23 properties files this translates to 575-920 total seconds (or 9-15 minutes).
I tried turning off cookies, but the timeout still occurs.
Can anyone explain why this is happening and how to fix it?