Microsoft Windows Performance

In order to update the status buffer, git has to be run a few dozen times. That is problematic on Microsoft Windows, because that operating system is exceptionally slow at starting processes. Sadly this is an issue that can only be fixed by Microsoft itself, and they don’t appear to be particularly interested in doing so.

Beside the subprocess issue, there also exist other Window-specific performance issues, some of which can be worked around. The maintainers of "Git for Windows" try to reduce their effect, and in order to benefit from the latest performance tweaks, should always use the latest release. Magit too tries to work around some Windows-specific issues.

According to some sources setting the following Git variables can also help.

git config --global core.preloadindex true   # default since v2.1
git config --global core.fscache true        # default since v2.8
git config --global gc.auto 256

You should also check whether an anti-virus program is slowing things down.