Premiere pro slows down and lags when images are on the timeline.

Hi there! Any image I put on the timeline, be it jpg or png, makes the premiere incredibly difficult to use. If there is an image present on the timeline, the playhead lags for a second before playing after pressing spacebar. Then when the playhead passes the image, the program monitor freezes and if I stop playback, audio continues to play for a few seconds. Every once in a while it's crashed the program.

The only way I've been able to work is to render preview over the images via in-to-out. I have tried uninstalling premiere, cleareing my caches, etc. 

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Windows 10

Latest version of premiere 22