Slow AIR startup when too many files are in directory where application was installed

I'm writing an application that uses over a couple of thousand files and I have the following problem. When application is starting up it takes a couple of minutes to get to the first screen. I've narrowed the problem to be associated with the number of files in the application installation directory. After removing these files application starts up normally. The weird thing is that the debug version of the app starts normally. The problem only exists in the release version after its installation. I have to add that I load like 30 xml files on startup which should not be so uncommon but trying to get to the bottom of this I've even turned this off. The thousands of files I'm speaking of are untouched during the startup process they just reside in the installation directory. Once I move them out of the directory application starts up within a second. Does anyone know what AIR might be doing in that time? I've observed some CPU activity of the app like 10-20% and application seems to allocate memory for some unknown reason during the waiting. Is AIR checking all the files on startup? Is there a way to turn this开发者_运维问答 checkup process off?

I haven't heard of this before, but after looking online, I did find this. It might be a problem with your OS' restricting you access. Either way, you might want to look into the user's local storage instead of the applications.

Files distributed with AIR application are digitally signed. If signatures are verified on each startup, this may explain why it happens only in release.
Thousands of files may be worth of packing in zip archive. It's easy to extract them with any smart zip-library and single zip file will decrease install/uninstall time.