Nuendo 13 (13.0.51) stuck on "Initializing: All MIDI Inputs" (checking licenses)

Hello!
Does anybody have any idea why Nuendo 13, after the update to 13.0.51, cannot get past the “Initializing: All MIDI Inputs” on Windows 10? I found a similar topic for Cubase 13, where it was suggested that Waves plugins could be causing the problem. I tried deinstalling and reinstalling Waves and Nuendo itself, disabling 3rd party plugins… nothing works. I even let the process run for 6 hours and it still was stuck with over 1,128,224 Kbytes memory footprint and consistent “Very High” power usage. Ableton, Studio One, Bitwig, FL Studio and Waveform all launch normally. Nuendo is activated. Libraris are scanned and recognized. Interesting note: I tried running Maintenance Tasks in “old” eLicenser Control center, but it claimed that the dongle was used by other applications and the only application running was Nuendo (stuck at launch). Sometimes in the Task Manager it seems that the process is stuck at checking licenses.
Any idea or fix would be greatly appreciated. I literally cannot get Nuendo to launch no matter what I try.