Premiere (and After Effects) crashing upon opening preferences menu

Oh... create a restore point first. That way you can always go back to where you were.

Settings/System/About - then System Protection/Create (of course make sure it's on for your c: drive)

I still say add a user account.

Settings/Accounts/Other Users/Add account.

I would uninstall first, Add the user. Using the new account, reinstall. Then give it a shot.

Well, I had tried one last time with uninstalling and reinstalling, opened preferences - locked up. I had to leave, so I just left it as it went unresponsive.

When I came back, preferences was loaded up. Once I changed some preferences and clicked OK, it locked up again. Still locked up five minutes later. I'm going to just leave it to see if it ever unlocks, but this isn't sustainable, regardless.

OK, good effort! 🙂

The only thing I can think of is your Windows User Account. Can you create a new one, log in with that and try it. Otherwise, you can try Adobe, you can use the Chat button from Creative Cloud.

Cleared out the folder, but didn't reinstall. Still froze on opening Preferences.

@MyerPj after uninstalling with the app, rebooting, and reinstalling, still crashes on opening preferences.

I'm going to clean out the folder next.

Here's where the preference are, this link should take you right there.

%UserProfile%\Documents\Adobe\Premiere Pro

The highest #'d folder is the current one. You can see I play with mine all the time. Rename it, (if it's 23, maybe 'x32' or such.) Then start pp, it should take you to the app, then from the initial screen select from the main menu EDIT\Preferences try to get there quickly. You don't need to open a project before you go to the menu.

Yes, open the preferences and .... Oh... 🙂

You must get into prefences to turn off the sync preferences.

@MyerPj Can preferences be scrubbed from syncing or can I turn off syncing preferences?

Uninstall without the tool, then reboot and use the tool, then reboot. then try again.