This midi issue was covered excellently in a post nearly 3 years ago and after following the information listed in that post I successfully reduced my midi initialization time from about 40 seconds to about four. I’ve never had to address that issue again until my SSD drive became clogged with all kinds of written updated pieces of information.
And while I was free of it for those three years it resurfaced again with my new larger SSD installation. I thought I might bring this forward to someone facing similar issues. The post by " irregular " has worked wonders for me and I would assume several others based on rereading that post.
With Windows reinstalled and my current copy of Cubase 8.5.10, the midi initialization time was approximately 70 seconds. This is where the screen just sits there and does nothing as the computer checks for calls to HDAUDIO in the registry.
Currently, I am back down to under four seconds. Knowing what it was, and what it can be… makes me a bit crazy so I had to give it another try using that old routine. For anyone else in the same position I refer you to this post below.