Illustrator hangs when opening a file or creating a new one

Same hang here.  It is ridiculously slow and greatly impeding my ability to work.  This is the first time that I've been truly disappointed in Adobe.  I am now going to have to revert back to 2018 CC if they cannot solve my problem.  I'm running a Dell Precision 5510 with XEON and maxed RAM, so it is NOT a hardware problem.  I really hope Adobe is actually reading these posts.

If you installed CC 2019 using the option to retain the previous preferences and settings then that may be the source of your problem. Try deleting your Illustrator preferences and see if that fixes the problem.

To do so:

You can try the quick way of resetting on a PC which is to hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift when launching Illustrator and respond affirmatively when asked if you want to reset. There have been some recent reports that the window asking if you want to reset is not popping up but that the prefs are being reset anyway. If this works great but if it doesn’t you may have to manually delete them.

To do so:

On Windows 7 and above the preference files are hidden. To find them go to the Control Panel and open Folder Options and then click the View tab. Then select “Show hidden files and folders” or “Show hidden files, folders or drive options” in Advanced Settings. Then delete (or rename) the folder at the end of this path: C:\Users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator [version number]\ Settings\<Language>. Make sure that Illustrator is closed when you do this. When you relaunch the program it will create  new preference files and the program will be at its default settings.

The advantage of manually deleting preference files is that after you’ve reset up the program (make sure that no document window is open) to your liking, you can create copies of your personalized “mint” preference files (make sure that you quit the program before copying them—that finalizes your customization) and use them in the future to replace any corrupt versions you may need to delete.