Every button press in Media Encoder 14.4 takes about 3-5 minutes?

Things that should take less than a second, like: Create New Preset, or clicking on the preset type for a clip take multiple minutes in Media Encoder 14.4. Every button I press sends the little wheel spinning, my PC fan starts cranking up and I have to wait. Anyone else seeing this? I'm on notebook with Windows 10, Core i7, 32G RAM, NVidia RTX card so it's not that I'm trying to use an ancient PC or something. 

thanks!

Hoagy