Minecraft Launcher fails to start on Nvidia Optimus GPU and 64bit JRE

I've had this issue (see attached image) for some time but used to resolve it by switching over to the 32bit JRE, however the performance there was very poor and Minecraft couldn't allocate enough RAM to run smoothly.

I've tried adding the Nvidia program profiles for both java.exe and javaw.exe (for the 64bit JRE) and forcing them to "NVIDIA GPU", but still got the same error.

From the Windows Event log:

Faulting application name: javaw.exe, version: 7.0.600.19, time stamp: 0x536a919d
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000007fef94c0004
Faulting process id: 0x1c84
Faulting application start time: 0x01cf82318d0b95f0
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe
Faulting module path: unknown
Report Id: ce740048-ee24-11e3-baa2-005056c00008

The game works fine when I force the Nvidia program profile for "minecraft.exe" to "Integrated graphics" - but very slow.