Musescore fails on startup

re: Musescore 3.6.2 - Win 10 system

Musescore will not start.

A flash screen for Musescore comes up. The screen displays for a long time the message "Loading SounsFonts ...". The system then crashes. The Musescore Crash Reporter screen appears.

I can not proceed with Musescore any further.

Musescore was working. On this machine. There have been no big changes to the system. Musescore always did take a while to load the SoundFonts. Now for no apparent reason it won't continue past that point.
Any ideas on how I might fix it. Any help you can offer would be very much appreciated.

Thanks (in advance)

Jim Keith
(jimmkeith@gmail.com)