It definately is windows defender security. our infosec team had the end user engineering team turn on everything for app guard, protected folders, etc sometime last week. i had to put in exceptions to turn off DEP for VS code exe, PowershellProtools.Host.exe, psscriptpad, and even for msiexec, ccm, pickerhost, etc. i disabled all panels except for quick scripts, variables, and help. Now it loads normally. still need to continue troubleshooting since i think Defender security is preventing the PowershellProtools.Host.exe from attaching to the powershell process(s). That is why the Providers, Host Processes, etc take forever to load. So the problem is on my end and not on yours. Thank you for the help.