slow of first page, running on windows/IIS

I'm more into the LAMP stack, but I've been asked to work on a site that is running Windows and IIS 2008. I'm a beginner with IIS, so please be patient with me on this, and please ask me to provide more information if that is needed to determine.

I read the answer here (Slow first page load on asp.net site), but it seems like if I go to the site with one browser it takes long to load the first page, then fast on all other pages, then if I open up another browser, it's the same thing, so it's not somethin开发者_运维技巧g that is saved on the server, but per session?

Is there a way to have the application running at all times?

Right now it is taking 12 to 15 seconds for the first page to load.

I have access to the WebControlCenter and FTP.

I would look in the Global.asax page and see if there is anything going on when a session is started. There usually is a method in there called Session_Start that is called whenever a session is started. Also, it might have to do with the site being configured in debug mode. You can change the web.config setting to false, which has a big impact on performance.

I'm familiar with the phenomenon described in the question you've linked to, but your what you're describing does seem a bit odd.
firstly- try Jeff's suggestion and see if indeed there's something at the beginning of the session which slows it down.
If not- try answering this-
1. is the first page always slow or only on first access to it?
2. what happens if you open another tab in the browser (not a different browser)?
3. it's possibel that the page contains some heavy resources (like images, script files etc.) which are only downloaded on the first access to the page. try tracing your http responses you get and see what their sizes are.
4. try to enable trace on your web page to see the events which are taking the longest time (on aspx you need to add 'Page Trace="true"' to the page declaration)
hope one of these helps...

Have you tried a http debugger here? Lots of things could be going on here, but the fact that you get different behavior by using different browsers indicates it is probably some particular resource that is overweight.