The title says it all. Unfortunately, I don't remember the circumstances as to when this happened (like some update or whatnot). Things I have tried (that didn't fix it):

1. Turning off desktop effects
2. Changing icon theme
3. restarting / logging out
4. deleting the home/.kde/share/ apps/dolphin folder (was this the right one to remove?)

I remember this happened to me a couple of years ago. I think it was Kubuntu at the time. Anyway, it went away when I did a fresh install (not because of this, but because I was going to anyway), so I never worried about it. But here it is again.

FYI, running fedora 20 32 bit, kde 4.12.5.

Thanks for any help

is the initial folder huge, a non-Linux filesystem or mounted remotely?

when starting Dolphin does Ksysguard or other monitors show excessive i/o and or cpu usage?

does a new user experience this?

you might try renaming ~/.kde[4]/share/config/dolphinrc (deleting is too permanent)

I tried your suggestion, and renamed the dolphinrc file, but this did not help. I checked my wife's account, and dolphin fires right up. So, I suppose there is something goofy with my settings, but I do not know what or how to fix it =/.

Also, to answer your question, dolphin starts at my home folder. Nothing goofy. The home folder is about 132 GB, but this was the case BEFORE dolphin started acting up as well.

did you try monitoring cpu and I/O during the 20 seconds?

a few thing to try:
run in krunner: kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental 2> /dev/null
with your KDE session logged out delete your cache and temp folders (/var/tmp/kdecache-username & /tmp/kde-usename)

create a new user and open Dolphin to your ~/ with the command: dolphin /home/username

google01103 wrote:did you try monitoring cpu and I/O during the 20 seconds?

a few thing to try:
run in krunner: kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental 2> /dev/null
with your KDE session logged out delete your cache and temp folders (/var/tmp/kdecache-username & /tmp/kde-usename)

create a new user and open Dolphin to your ~/ with the command: dolphin /home/username

Well, I attempted to delete my cache and temp folders via my wife's profile, only to find out that she does not have administrative priveledges. So, I restarted my machine, and it took an unusually long time to log in (to my profile). Somehow, it seems to have corrected itself. I would bet that you are correct that it was the cache/temp files, but I have no way to test it now.

Anyway, thanks for the help. If it happens again, I will try that first.

As this issue appears to have been resolved, could you please mark it as solved?