I tried a number of different solutions including:
- Running in Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode (lithtech.exe and mm9.exe)
- Running the game in Admin mode (lithtech.exe and mm9.exe)
- Using Mok's version of the CSHELL.dll file

Nothing seemed to help, and I was at a point in the game where loot was dropping so often, I had to fix the issue if it was going to be playable at all. I then saw a thread about running the game in Windowed-Mode by modifying the target of the game's shortcut to execute: "C:\Games\Might and Magic IX\lithtech.exe" +windowed 1

To my surprise ... it worked!!! Screens that took literally ~90 seconds to come up, now took only ~1 second.

I returned to my game (lvl 14 characters going to the Ta'Sar Academy dungeon), and as soon as I engaged in combat, I noticed that mobs attacked insanely fast (i.e. as soon as I aggro a mob, I do not even see them run at me, they just blink and are in front of me and attack multiple times a second). I tried enabling "Turn-Based Combat" (Enter), but even then, one click of my mouse caused all of my characters to attack at the same time within .5 seconds. After the battle, I noticed that the in-game clock was progressing at a much faster pace (which I honestly do not care that much about).

If I save and restart the game in Full Screen Mode, combat returns back to normal speeds, but I am back to ~90 second waits when looting and accessing menus.

I've tried various combinations of comparability mode, using/not using Mok's cshell.dll, and full screen / window mode, and I'm either getting normal game-play speeds with slow menus, or ultra fast game-play speeds with responsive menus.