Minecraft Launcher takes in excess of 10 minutes to load

Minecraft Launcher takes in excess of 10 minutes, paused at the "Loading profiles" stage. This has happened on this computer for the last year or so, but is getting more annoying.
This only affects my computer, not my kid's one or my wife's which are on the same network, with the same anti-virus software.
The launcher log stops at "Refreshing remote version list" on each occasion. Here is an example of the Launcher Log right now, which just icked over to being able to log in while I was typing this out, showing the 17 minute delay at one step.
[15:42:11 INFO]: Minecraft Launcher 1.6.70 (through bootstrap 100) started on windows...
[15:42:12 INFO]: Current time is Dec 31, 2016 3:42:12 PM
[15:42:12 INFO]: System.getProperty('os.name') == 'Windows 8.1'
[15:42:12 INFO]: System.getProperty('os.version') == '6.3'
[15:42:12 INFO]: System.getProperty('os.arch') == 'amd64'
[15:42:12 INFO]: System.getProperty('java.version') == '1.8.0_25'
[15:42:12 INFO]: System.getProperty('java.vendor') == 'Oracle Corporation'
[15:42:12 INFO]: System.getProperty('sun.arch.data.model') == '64'
[15:42:12 INFO]: proxy == DIRECT
[15:42:18 INFO]: JFX is already initialized
[15:42:24 INFO]: Refreshing local version list...
[15:42:28 INFO]: Refreshing remote version list...
[15:59:16 INFO]: Refresh complete.
[15:59:17 INFO]: Loaded 2 profile(s); selected 'WillEv'
[15:59:17 INFO]: Refreshing auth...
[15:59:17 INFO]: Logging in with access token