Premiere Projects Load Slowly After Upgrade

Hello,

I have a Mac user (high-end desktop - I forget the exact model. The machine meets the system requirements. OS version is Sierra (version behind)). From what I have gathered, the user used to work in Adobe Premiere 2015. Over the past month, he has upgraded through Creative Cloud, to 2018 (we have also tried 2017). We store our project and media files to an array on our network (gets backed up hourly). When the user attempts to open a project file, it begins to load and then stops about 75% through the loading project bar. On most projects, it usually finishes after about 10 minutes. After this, it prompts to save the file (I am guessing because it is a new version of Premiere and is doing some type of conversion). I am also guessing that the loading is taking a long time because it is converting or analyzing the media files inside the project as well (JPGs, MOVs). If it does load, I do notice most of the time that it is still loading the media files on the bottom bar. Most projects are KB in size (a few are 30 MB). When I disconnect our marketing array, the projects open up quick, but immediately ask to skip the media files because they cannot be found. I also tried these troubleshooting steps below:

1. Logged onto the Mac as a different user (admin).

2. Moved the project locally (I did not try to move the media files locally to the machine).

3. Tried 2017 and 2018 versions of the software.

Steps I still have not tried:

1. Attempt to open projects on another machine. I have tried to open on my Windows 10 machine, but I didn't have the network drive mapped. So the projects opened quickly. I will be trying from another machine tomorrow.

2. Analyzed the network/machine resources. My guess is the memory or CPU usage is very high when it is trying to load. The user has experienced crashing with the software. I would also imagine that there is a lot of data traveling back and forth between the computer and the array when it is loading.

Is this typical of upgrades to Premiere? I want to rule out that this is not the machine or network drive and that we simply need to wait for the project files to load.

Thanks!