Of course make copies of things, the project, etc... But you could try creating a new project in the current folder and IMPORT the problem project, see if that helps.
Problem solved. I have two projects with this issue. I solved it by essentially thinning out the project.
Both of these are very large projects with a lot of media and sequence lengths from 45 minutes in one project to 90 plus minues in the other. Every day, I copy the sequence I'm working on and save the previous day in an archive folder. The sequences have been adding up for months creating a bloated project. By deleting the archive sequences and saving the project as as a thinned out version, I essentially brought the project size down to 15MB files from 40 to 50MB. The projects now open much faster. Problem solved. Thanks for all the above help.