Inexplicably deteriorating performance of Git repositories on Windows

Hey,

We have a bunch of Windows users, unfortunately, and they're using the latest msysGit release (Git-1.7.3.1-preview20101002).

An interesting issue we've noticed is that the Time To Complete of their common operations start deteriorating inexplicably, and severely, some time after the clone.

For instance, immediately after a clone, `git status` takes about 5-6s. Which is slow compared to Linux (consistent 1-2s), but still usable (it's a BIG repo).

However, after a reboot (of all things), `git status` latency skyrockets to 14-15s, making the repo unusable.

Any idea what's going on? We just recently switched from SVN, and those users are getting really frustrated. BTW, the only real alternative I'm aware of, Cygwin's git, is even slower.

Thanks, D