* Very slow to connect to a meeting *

Update: the issue came back after a few days. Please disregard the below. I won't delete the text to keep this as information for an approach that did not work.

I ran into this exact problem 2 days ago on a new Dell Precision with Win 11. I'm posting here to share what happened and how it was fixed for me.

After I had the machine for approximately 2 weeks, it started to take 30+ seconds to connect to a Teams meeting.

What I had done just before is uninstalled (in Device Manager) all drivers under the Intel Smart Sound Technology for MIPI device (this was recommended to me to fix distorted sound. After a reboot, the sound was better but Teams started to have the problem here. This clearly hints towards the sound drivers being part of the issue.

How it was fixed: I closed the lid during a Teams meeting today and the laptop went into standby. Upon opening the lid again, the meeting was ended, but the Windows Firewall requested some new permissions for Teams. I granted them and since then, the Teams session starts almost instantly again. I'll try to find out the exact firewall change but I didn't look earlier.

Update: these are the 2 messages in the Security Log around the time this happened. Both appeared multiple times within a 1 second timeframe:

#1
A change was made to the Windows Firewall exception list. A rule was modified.

Profile Changed: (null)

Modified Rule:
Rule ID: TCP Query User{[A UUID]}C:\users\sample\appdata\local\microsoft\teams\current\teams.exe
Rule Name: teams.exe

#2
A change was made to the Windows Firewall exception list. A rule was modified.

Profile Changed: (null)

Modified Rule:
Rule ID: UDP Query User{[Another UUID]}C:\users\sample\appdata\local\microsoft\teams\current\teams.exe
Rule Name: teams.exe