Nothing else has slowed down on my PC. I recently had a weird issue with plug in layouts that I posted about. I had to delete them all and just rebuild them because my original ones had vanished from all my menus (but the files were still on my drive with all their contents intact).
 
I'm doing drive error checks now but they all look okay so far. One thing that has changed is that I bought an Oculus Rift. That's the only thing I can think of that's changed. A week or two ago it loaded in a few seconds. Once it's up and running everything runs perfectly smoothly (some VSTs load quicker than ever since putting hard drives into USB 3.0 ports) but it's just the startup. 
 
Anyway what issues could be causing a slow initial load? (Also if I close it and re-open it takes just as long to load again.) I've done a search and can see someone who uninstalled their anti-virus/malware which improved speed but I don't have an anti-virus beyond Windows "defender".
 
Another thing I did was update my GPU driver and I moved one of my monitors to the integrated GPU. Knowing NVIDIA I wouldn't be surprised if that was causing it.
 
Also VST scans are fine. The slow load isn't to do with that I don't think. Once it's loaded the VST scan starts and it's the regular speed.
 
Another thing I did was swap all my USB ports to make room for the Oculus. All my drives had different letters but I changed them back in drive manager.
 
Sonar is installed on an SSD, everything else loads in fractions of seconds, even games. It's just the one program I treasure above everything else, the only thing on this computer that I use everyday, that is, of course, giving me reasons to explode.
 
Any help would be appreciated!

You know what... I don't know how to explain this but I just restarted. Windows did an update and when it started up again Sonar is loading in like 0.5 seconds!
 
I'm so relieved because I was thinking I was on the brink of having to format AGAIN. I've been so careful to keep backing up and keep things clean (I don't run ANY strange exes now without checking them on my old PC first (I kinda feel bad for it, it's been relegated to taste tester for my new PC), just install all my music stuff and use it, I've formatted because of my recklessness about 10 times in the last 3 years) so couldn't understand why this was happening.
 
A thing I DID do today, hoping it would help, was move an external USB drive from a hub (it's a great hub, powered, USB 3.0 etc) to one of the USB slots on the actual motherboard. So I don't know what fixed it, the update or moving that drive.
 
The only things on that drive are a few Kontakt libraries, so they don't load while Cakewalk loads right? I'd have to use Kontakt for that wouldn't I?
 
So what the hell fixed this? One of my drives (one that has no music stuff on it thank god) wasn't letting me finish a disk check so I'm going to check that again but all the other drives said everything's fine. So I'm curious about why this suddenly started working. OH I ALSO removed an OLD, scratched CD from my optical drive. When I put that in there it takes a few minutes to load the tracks because it's so battered. It's about 18 years old itself. Does Sonar do a drive check when initially loading? Maybe it was trying to read that CD? Or the USB drive?
 
Anyway I'm happy it's fixed but really want to know why now.