[Info-vax] Vim issues

[MG]

On DECUServe ("EISNER::") I've encountered a few peculiar
issues with Vim.

The Vim version in question is 7.1.236 (dated 12-MAY-2007,
as compiled on 24-JAN-2008 at 11:10:07 UTC? for OpenVMS
Alpha with Compaq C V6.5-001 on OpenVMS Alpha V7.3) as
installed in "SYS$TOOLS:" and defined as "VI*M :==
$VIMRUNTIME:VIM.EXE" in the symbols table, to be exact.

The first issue is that once in a while there's a lengthy
delay during startup, taking up to a minute or so (in my
estimation), whereas other moments it starts up nearly
instantaneously, i.e. in less than a second.

I naturally tried some things, like deleting some user
files (such as ".viminfo") in my SYS$LOGIN: directory to
see if that would make any difference, but it seemed not.
For instance, at the moment Vim will startup and work
fine, but a day or two ago it was behaving in the way
as described above and I've experienced this behavior
before.
I also tried an older version of Vim (6.1), but it
seem to exhibit a similar issue.  Other editors, such
as EVE, didn't seem to suffer
There's only so much I can do to diagnose the possible
problem as an unprivileged user.  What could be the
cause of this, system resources, disk utilization,
etc.?

The second issue, arguably more grave, might be a
logical translation issue.  For instance, when I edit a
file to a logical defined to a specific directory, e.g.
"folder$private:" (pointing to a directory like this:
"DISK_USER:[DECUSERVE_USER.MY_USERNAME.MY_DIRECTORY]"),
Vim will then only sometimes successfully read and/or
write and other times.  I believe it usually goes wrong
when one's DEFAULT directory is set to such a location,
but I'm not completely sure.
Worrisome is that it can cause data corruption, turning
a file into a 'directory (per how Vim seems to reports
it).

Are these known issues and, if so, are there also
known workarounds?

Lastly, please try to stay on topic within this thread.
Thank you in advance.

  - MG