After Effects Crashing - Composition Panel Turns White

I'm having a recurring issue where I open a particular AE file, and either the Composition Panel is immediately white, or after a few seconds it turns white, and then I can no longer scrub along the timeline and the program crashes within a few seconds. Sometimes my screen will go completely black for a second upon opening, and then when the screen comes back, the Composition Panel will be white. 

It seems to be an issue with one particular project file. While I've been using AE on this computer for a few months now, this project file is the first one where I've really been using it intensely (aka, dozens & dozens of pre-comps). This also happened shortly after I started a LinkedIn Learning AE course, which involved downloading a number of AE files from old versions of AE. Not sure if that is at all related. 

The issue seemed to be fixed a month or so ago and I worked in that project for a few weeks without issue, but I just now imported the comp into a premiere project, and then when I opened it in AE it happened again!

Here is what I have tried so far, with corresponding dates:

• Insured AE was up-to-date (v 17.1.4) (10/16)
• Resetting the preferences of After Effects (10/16) - Didn’t work
• Clean Database & Cache (10/16) - Didn’t Work
• Move Cache to SSD (10/16)- Didn’t Work
• Updated AMD Radeon Graphics Driver to version released on 9/9/2020 (10/19) - Didn’t Work
• Updated Intel(R) Graphics Windows 10 DCH Driver (10/19) - Didn’t Work

Computer Stats:

Model: HP Notebook 17t-by2020

- 256 GB M.2 SSD
- 16 GB DDR4-2666 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)
 - 3-cell, 41 Wh Lithium-ion prismatic Battery
 - Intel® Core™ i7-10510U (1.8 GHz, up to 4.9 GHz, 8 MB cache, 4 cores)

- AMD Radeon™ 530 Graphics (4 GB)

- These AE files & cache are all stored on an external 1 TB Samsumb Eluteng SSD with over 600 GB of free space left.

- My laptop is always connected to an external monitor.

I hope someone can help! I've got to make some motion graphics for a client next week so would really love to get this worked out this week ❤️