Why does Microsoft Office Picture Manager startup slowely?

[negative]

I don't know when it began, but if I double click a filename that is
associated with Picture Manager (like a .JPG), I get Picture Manager's splash
screen and it sits there for well over a minute doing absolutely nothing. No
disk activity, no network activity, it's not trouncing through memory, and it
doesn't seem to be sucking up any CPU cycles as reported by Task Manager.
I've searched for solutions online and couldn't find any. Many other people
are having this as well. Any help would be highly appreciated.

Thanks,
William