The only solution I found for the taking over 5 minutes to intialize Claymore.  Is reinstall os and not 'upgrade' to 1803.   Or  Reduce the number of card in rig to under 5 sometimes 6.   There is something that happened with 1803 that causes  claymore initializing process to take much longer.   To the point where if you have anything past 5 or 6 cards it times out at a hard coded 5 min.  Hope Claymore fixes this problem soon, if he can.   It might be a problem in the OS.  I've been wondering if I was the only one having this problem.