After Effects CC 2019 crashes on opening preferences

Hi,

I have a weird problem - of which I am not sure it is AE's problem but I have to start somewhere.

I have had my AE Disk Cache on an external harddrive (Transcend StoreJet 25M2) for some years, no problems. But now, if I try to open preferences while my disk cache is located at that external harddrive, AE crashes.

If I delete my preferences (and Disk Cache is set back to default), I can open my preferences without any problems. But if I then set it back to my external harddrive, AE crashes on the next try to open the preferences.

AE is allowed through my firewall.

Tried installing a previous verious (16.1) but no solution.

Some specs, if they might be of influence:

Windows: OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro Version 10.0.17134 Build 17134

Graphics card: Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz, 2601 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)

Memory: 16 GB