I tried installing StarUML (after doing winetricks vcrun6 msxml3, as required), and the setup crept along very slowly... so I got curious and ran top. Most of the cpu time was being used by Explorer and wineserver, and interestingly, if I suspended Explorer by doing strace -p <pid of explorer> and then pressing ^S, the install ran awful darn fast.
So, what was explorer doing that was slowing things down so much?
writev(3, [{"l\0\0\0\30\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 64}, {"M\0S\0I\0M\0E\0S\0e\0r\0v\0i\0c\0e\0", 24}], 2) = 88 ... writev(3, [{"l\0\0\0*\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 64}, {"M\0S\0I\0M\0E\0R\0e\0c\0o\0n\0v\0e\0r\0t\0O\0p\0"..., 42}], 2) = 106 ... writev(3, [{"l\0\0\0&\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 64}, {"M\0S\0I\0M\0E\0M\0o\0u\0s\0e\0O\0p\0e\0r\0a\0t\0"..., 38}], 2) = 102 ... writev(3, [{"l\0\0\0*\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 64}, {"M\0S\0I\0M\0E\0R\0e\0c\0o\0n\0v\0e\0r\0t\0R\0e\0"..., 42}], 2) = 106 ...
This persisted in the app, too, not just in the installer.
So it kind of sounds like our msime support is hurting us performance-wise? - Dan