NVIDIA ChoosePixelFormat delay

[CatAtWork]

ChoosePixelFormat has started to take a very long time to return, but only on its first call per instance of any application. I noticed this in my own code, but even Doom 3 exhibits this strange, 10-second-long-or-greater delay.

I've tried different 80- and 90-series drivers, and they're all doing the same thing, on both 7800 and 8800 cards. This is peculiar to a single Windows installation only.

Google tells me that I'm not alone, but I couldn't find an explanation or a solution.

[zeoverlord]

Now that shouldn't happen.
I once had a problem with an antivirus program that always paused at the start of every program (it was checking the executables for viruses), if you have one try disabling it and see if it runs faster (don't forget to re enable it afterwards).

Unfortunately it was on the computer i used for Maya, and with all those dll's and such it took like 30 sec before it started to load stuff.

[CatAtWork]

Well, I do have Maya 7 and 8 on this computer. My coworker's computer also has Maya on it, but doesn't have the delay.

No AV stuff running.

Thanks for the response, though.

[Relic]

I've tried different 80- and 90-series drivers, and they're all doing the same thing, on both 7800 and 8800 cards. This is peculiar to a single Windows installation only.This doesn't sound right, GF8800 isn't supported with those drivers. Which drivers exactly?
What about this: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_97.02.html

[CatAtWork]

I've used many different drivers, and I'm using the drivers that you linked at the moment. Every driver that I've tried has the same problem, but it's only happening on one of my systems.

Something is screwed up, but I don't want to reinstall Windows if I can help it.

This machine used to run an 1800XT and a 7800 GTX side by side, so that may be part of the problem.
I'm going to run the ATi uninstaller, and then try a 3rd party driver cleaner if that fails.

[CatAtWork]

While watching Regmon's output during ChoosePixelFormat, there are a series of 10 second delays that look like this:

3:14:26 PM tide.exe:2260 CloseKey HKLM\Hardware\DeviceMap\Video SUCCESS
3:14:36 PM tide.exe:2260 OpenKey HKLM\Hardware\DeviceMap\VIDEO SUCCESS Access: 0x82000000

The registry is accessed heavily and redundantly during this time.

[Relic]

Any clue what tide.exe is?
There are too many Google hits on that to know remotely.

[CatAtWork]

Tide.exe is my application. :)