Well, I already tried a troubleshooting run like that, and it did not make any difference :c. Of course I'm not expecting that someone has a timetested solution at this point, but I'm rather keeping the problem up here in the hopes that someone can point me at, e.g., a variable in TES5edit to which a bad edit could be held responsible.
Given the amount of time I actually have to play the game with, I must say that thus far the wait hasn't seemed like that long.