(Win 7 x64) KNIME 2.12.1 Start-up Very Slow - often crashes

I recently installed the latest KNIME build of 2.12.1, with all community extensions. The start-up process is excruciatingly slow - before it even gets to the plug-in loading splash screen (with the progress bar), it just hangs up on the first splash screen and sits idly in my task list. Are there any tips/tricks I can perform with the .ini file? Is this a bug in the software itself? Is it my computer? Is it me?

Installing all community extensions is really a lot, and also make it quite problematic to analyze where the problem lies. I would just install the one you are acutally using.

Sorry, I know this is most probably not what you wanted to hear,

best, Iris
 

Did you increase your local memory settings according to https://tech.knime.org/faq#q4_2?

Yes, I did all the parlor tricks..