Open 7H->Workshop->General Settings to see if "direct" and "music" are duplicated in the Additional Folders tab. If so, then it's already been reported and will have a future fix. Delete them down to one each to eliminate the in-game loading lag.
Lastly, like I touched upon up above, why does the game seem to break for no reason other than time? Game was working just fine when I tested it a few weeks ago. Today I tried to jump in and my install was broken, so I had to reinstall the game converter...
For many reasons:
1. It's an old (ported) game with a very complex file structure that doesn't resemble what you may be used to with modern day modding.
2. Remember Windows 95? I don't either because I was too busy spending hundreds of hours on FF7 for the PS1. How about we port this game to PC at the same time Windows 98 is developed and released. Fast forward 21 years and multiple other Windows releases, and this is the mess we have to deal with.
3. Modding doesn't work out of the box, hence why Aali's Driver exists. It's what created this modding community over 15 years ago and built the first road that continued to where we are now.
4. Once we had the necessary driver, mod creation increased rapidly and created the bulk of what you see today. With that said, most mods were either created, or base their creation upon those first methods, when there weren't SE or Steam (2012) versions of the game. Meaning, most mods are built for the 1998 version of the game.
5. Since 3 versions of the game exist simultaneously, a Game Converter was created to keep all game versions based upon the 1998 version. This was necessary to keep the bulk of the mods compatible with any version bought.
6. The Game Converter requires registry key changes that work with the 1998 version.
7. Why did Skyrim mods break whenever Bethesda updated the game? When Windows updates, it can sometimes break these registry changes. This is when the Game Converter is required any given time after an installation and why the Overwrite option was created for it.