Q: iTunes 12.0.1 takes 5+ minutes to launch?! (Windows 8.1 64-bit)

So about a month ago iTunes just stopped launching all together, I didn't know if it was after the 12.0.1 update or not, but I thought it was not launching at all. But I would come back to my PC and find that it had eventually launched? So I closed it and waited, and it took about 5 mins to launch! So I uninstalled and reinstalled iTunes, same issue. I followed all apples support guides and nothing, and nothing from the support communities fixed this. So I uninstalled iTunes, Apple updated, apple software support, bonjour. mobile services, and deleted every single folder related to anything apple (program files, program data, appdata, all of it!), and only kept my music. Reinstalled itunes... and same issue, it takes forever to launch! When I launch it, "iTunes (32-bit)" shows up in the task manager, but not as a program, but as a background process until 5+ minutes later when it actually shows up as a program? So what can I do to resolve this? I've never had issues with itunes and I don't know what's going wrong, could it be 12.0.1? I didn't make any major changes to my PC besides installed regular windows updates and updating drivers? Any help would be greatly appreciated!