with heavy modded sse, the time from game program launch to main menu changed from 4 minutes to 17 minutes?

[Fractalbase]

a few months ago the time from game program start to main menu with my modded sse was 4 minutes.

since the recent sse version updates, including backported extended esl support, time from game program start to main menu has increased to about 17 minutes.

I know, one suggestion is to get rid of a bunch of mods, I have too many.

But there must be something more to it?

242 active plugins, 4007 light plugins, 900,000 references, etc.  I had similar counts when booting the game to main menu only took 4 minutes.

is there a possibility that the number of formid's could indicate a longer boot time?

is this an infinite main menu issue that happens to get to the main menu after a while?

loading when switching areas in game is relatively quick, so that I'm not worried about.

Suggestions for mods in general or where to look for mods or plugins that can cause longer boot time?

[scorrp10]

Why on Earth do you need that many?    Chances are, you can get rid of 75-90% of that stuff and hardly notice any difference.    Regardless, I run with about 400 plugins, my time to main menu is under 40 seconds.

[Fractalbase]

was going for a "how much can I mod this game" ideal.