however, i vaguely recall figuring this out a while back. i backed up my appdata directory so i copied it back over and the load process was instantly different.
i don't need every single plugin to load every time i launch, what i need is to figure out if i've got a ram issue or not, and there's no easy way to do that....
the immediate concern is just making sure that the plugins i recently downloaded actually launch. so let's hope i can get through that without it freezing further, then try to bring some more ram back in.