Increasing build times with mvn clean install / npm ci on Windows 11 (IntelliJ IDEA)

Hello everyone,

I’m experiencing a strange issue with IntelliJ IDEA and my build times, and I hope someone has an idea what could be causing it.

When I run mvn clean install in my project, the build normally takes about 5 minutes (on my colleague’s Linux machine it’s around 2 minutes). However, after working for a few hours, the build time gradually increases to around 10–12 minutes. Today I even had a build that took 30 minutes.

Important details:

• It is always the same build, no configuration changes.
• New PC, freshly set up:
  • Windows 11
  • Intel Ultra 7 265K
  • 32 GB RAM
• I tried disabling plugins → no improvement.
• After running “Invalidate Caches”, the build time goes back to ~5 minutes.
• During the build, the entire PC becomes very sluggish and barely responsive.
• The most critical step seems to be npm ci.

I’ve read that there can be performance issues with npm and the Windows file system. But I don’t understand why the whole system would become almost unusable if that’s the case.

My questions:

• Has anyone experienced similar behavior on Windows 11?
• Are there known issues with npm ci and the Windows file system?
• Is it possible to completely disable or better control IntelliJ caching?
• Are there recommended IntelliJ or JVM settings for such cases?

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!