Hi,
It does sound like something is wrong there. Although it may just be GameEx doing what It does to try and hide Windows.
Please try and see how long it takes launching data/runitgame.bat and also please try from gameex after temporarily renaming hideos.exe
PS: Visual Pinball does normally take a while anyway and newer games in MAME can take a few. Laserdisc games also started up slow on the originals.