Game taking forever to start?

[wingatk]

I'm having a really strange issue that I haven't faced before. When I launch the game, my PC suddenly slows to a crawl and it takes several minutes for it to finally start. It also happens to Pacman. The strange thing is it works fine if I use my laptop screen to play. The stuttering startup lag only happens if I try to play on my monitor. Does anyone know why this is happening? I've played it on my monitor before without a problem, but the last time I played the game was several months ago. I'm thinking maybe a Windows update (Windows 11) or 24H2 somehow messed up something. I don't think it's a Nvidia issue since the game works fine on my laptop screen and I did make sure it was using Nvidia instead of the integrated card.

I tried everything I could think of: reinstalled the game, disabled Gsync, vsync, fullscreen optimization in the exe file, Windows game mode, Steam cloud, Steam overlay, ran as administrator, tried 60Hz, updated Nvidia drivers to the latest, etc. Nothing has worked. I checked processes in Task Manager and nothing seems out of the ordinary.