Nuendo hanging at the 93-94% mark upon opening

Nuendo 10.2.0.284 Windows 10

Opening projects hang at 93-94% on the progress bar. This snag happens on every project I open.
Nuendo will push through after about 10 minutes and finish loading the file, but obviously this delay is undesirable.

Fix?

Possibly related to a Virtual Instrument loading?

I am opening files that have had the same set of Virtual Instruments for some time now so the new “hang” time is anomalous.

10 minutes is a long time to wait for the file to finish opening.
This happens on my template file as well, where none of the VSTis are enabled yet (so nothing is loading into the RAM).
The progress bar does not state what specific step it is on at the point of sticking.