Premiere Pro CC 2017 Running SLOW

Hello,

I am hoping I can figure out some sort of solution as to why this would be...

A few weeks ago I noticed premiere pro began running much slower than normal, like clicking to a different spot on a timeline would take several seconds before it would show that corresponding frame point in the project window. It also would take 15-20 seconds MINIMUM just to save a project when it has never taken this long before. On top of that, playback had a horrible delay when I would hit space (or press play) to start playing in the timeline. It would sometimes take 15-30 seconds before it would actually begin playing.

And now here I am today, I opened premiere and it just said on the gray blank window, nothing ever showed up for me to select my project or anything...

I have all my CC programs installed on their own dedicated SSD, with nothing else installed on that. I also cleared the temporary cache folders and media cache to see if that would help and I saw no difference.

Any idea why this would be? Could this potentially be a hardware issue? The SSD that CC is installed on was purchased probably a year ago or so, it is a 500 GB Samsung EVO. I'm not the best at troubleshooting PC issues, so any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

-Andy