SQL Server Management Studio 2016 slow to reach splash screen

Question

I've got a fast Dell Precision 7720 laptop with a solid state drive, and all my applications load really quickly - apart from Management Studio. I also had this problem on my previous laptop.

I've read a number of discussions on this - and especially this one - but none of the solutions work for me. It takes 13 seconds to reach this screen:

I'm running Windows 10, and the following SQL Server versions:

Does anyone have an idea of what's going wrong? I'm sure this started happening relatively recently.

Answer 1

I had a similar issue on Windows 10 where Management Studio's SSMS.exe would launch but take forever just to get to the splash screen, before any connections; no UI would display. My fix:

1. Close SSMS.exe
2. Rename C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SQL Server Management Studio\14.0 to 14.0_OLD
3. Launch SSMS; splash screen and UI come up almost immediately

I had previous crashes of my machine (not Management Studio) so some file may have become corrupted, causing the slow start.