Well I tried reducing the geometry, and it works, but not sure if the issues are from the reduction, or something else.

I had about 30 million springs after importing at a distance of 0.3 (default is 0.5); after reducing the geometry there were just less than 30 million springs at default settins, and reducing to 0.4 gave about 2.5 million.

One curious thing I noticed; some of the hair went missions. the hair at the back should be longer. It is missing about 20cm (8 inches perhaps).