IMHO precompilation has minimal benefits unless you have a lot of assemblies that are kicked in on startup i.e. the background compiled only kicks in for modules as they are executed (it also has some disadvantages as Mitchell indicated earlier in the thread). However, perhaps my knowledge is out of date - perhaps you could profile the application (e.g. via redgate profiler) and publish what is causing the slow down (typically I find it's something such as a badly written httpmodule that accesses a large database) - and if it's a core element let us know so we can address it. Note: you may want to read http://geeks.ms/blogs/davidjrh/archive/2013/10/20/welcome-os-family-4-windows-server-2012-r2-iis-8-5-and-net-framework-4-5-1.aspx (and http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dotnet/archive/2013/10/09/asp-net-app-suspend-responsive-shared-net-web-hosting.aspx ) - if you have the opportunity to run in the cloud or use IIS 8.5/.net 4.5.1, it can dramatically improve startup performance.

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