[Suspended- pending HD swap] Sonar Platinum x64 showing splash banner for 40 seconds now.

I am building a fresh load of Splat x64 on Windows 10 Pro x64.
Somewhere along the line, installing plugins, Sonar inexplicably began taking 40 seconds to be ready.
So I told Sonar to not scan the plugins on startup and that did nothing to help.
 
I'm using an RME 2496 PCI card. and have 16gb of ram, disk is an ssd that this morning was checked for errors. nada.
Once Sonar is up it runs quick like it should.
 
What might it be waiting for? bitbridge? Santa Clause?
 

Thank you scook.
 
I deleted aud.ini, ttsseq.ini and reinstalled the RME drivers.
None of that fixed it.
I even disabled my midisport 8x8 that was a question mark in device manager before installing the driver somewhere along the lines.
 
So far no change.

No control surfaces attached or listed under Sonar preferences?

A weird one. I had a similar problem with an earlier version of platinum that seemed to take a long time at startup that I eventually tracked down to my external controllers (ie Sonar opened normally once I removed them). The problem rectified itself in a later update.
 
Certainly worth trying a replacement drive. I had a brand new ssd drive that tested perfectly yet wreaked havoc on my DAW. All worked fine once I changed it and the manufacturer reported it as faulty and provided a replacement  upon return.