openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Slow startup on Windows (~39s before ready) with long silent gap before plugin registration [1 participants]

Bug type

Regression (worked before, now fails)

Beta release blocker

No

Summary

OpenClaw startup is unexpectedly slow on Windows, and this has not improved across several versions.

Startup takes about 38.8 seconds before the gateway becomes ready. Most of the delay happens in a large silent gap after "starting..." and before the first plugin command is registered. Other Claw runtimes on the same machine do not show this kind of startup delay.

Steps to reproduce

1. Install OpenClaw 2026.4.15 on Windows
2. Run "openclaw gateway run"
3. Observe ~39 seconds of silence before "ready" appears

Expected behavior

Startup should be much faster (under 10s), or at minimum provide detailed logs during the slow phase so users can understand what is happening.

Actual behavior

The process appears to hang silently for ~37.5 seconds between "[gateway] starting..." and the first "Registered plugin command..." log line. There is zero log output during this gap.

Startup log: 2026-04-19T01:05:49.592+08:00 [gateway] loading configuration… 2026-04-19T01:05:50.895+08:00 [gateway] force: killed pid 1172 on port 18789 2026-04-19T01:05:50.904+08:00 [gateway] resolving authentication… 2026-04-19T01:05:50.960+08:00 [gateway] starting... 2026-04-19T01:06:28.489+08:00 Registered plugin command: /pair (plugin: device-pair) 2026-04-19T01:06:28.524+08:00 Registered plugin command: /phone (plugin: phone-control) 2026-04-19T01:06:28.577+08:00 Registered plugin command: /bot-logs (plugin: qqbot) 2026-04-19T01:06:28.615+08:00 Registered plugin command: /voice (plugin: talk-voice) 2026-04-19T01:06:28.633+08:00 [gateway] starting HTTP server... 2026-04-19T01:06:28.719+08:00 bonjour: starting (hostname=openclaw, instance="SKY-20191026YJJ (OpenClaw)", gatewayPort=18789, minimal=true) 2026-04-19T01:06:28.756+08:00 [health-monitor] started (interval: 300s, startup-grace: 60s, channel-connect-grace: 120s) 2026-04-19T01:06:29.802+08:00 [gateway] agent model: glm/GLM-5.1 2026-04-19T01:06:29.804+08:00 [gateway] ready (6 plugins: acpx, browser, device-pair, phone-control, qqbot, talk-voice; 38.8s)

OpenClaw version

2026.4.15 (041266a)

Operating system

Windows Server

Install method

npm global

Model

glm/GLM-5.1

Provider / routing chain

openclaw -> DawnLoadAI proxy -> GLM-5.1

Additional provider/model setup details

Default config, no custom modifications to startup or plugin loading.

Logs, screenshots, and evidence

Impact and severity

Affected: All Windows users Severity: Medium (not blocking but very annoying) Frequency: 100% of startups This has been slow for several releases now with no improvement.

Additional information

Add startup profiling/logging to identify where the ~37s is spent. Consider lazy-loading plugins or parallelizing initialization.