Premier 2018 extensions

It appears that in 2018 Adobe changed the extensions on Premiere projects from .prproj to .pproj. The problem that I am running into is that my older projects that are .prproj will not open in Premier 2018. I am running Windows 7. I have tried to change the default program, but it does not show up in my programs list. When I browse to the program and select the Adobe Premiere Pro.exe it will not change the default program. I have uninstalled and reinstalled 2018 three times with no luck. The only solution I have found so far is to change the extension on the old project to .pproj, open Premiere, go to file and open and the project, convert to a 2018 file, and re-link all my media.

This obviously works but it creates an incredible pain. If this is an actual issue I hope that Adobe releases a fix to this soon.

Has anyone else had this issue and have you found a different solution?