Space bar to unpause stops working randomly, and editing preferences crashes program

[hamletham]

I've been having a problem where the function that unpauses the video with the space bar stops working randomly

I saw that a lot of people have the same problem and that they fixed it by changing audio preferences, however, when I try to edit any preferences it crashes the program and the preference changes never save

Closing and restarting the program every 10 minutes or so to get the space bar to work just isn't gonna work if I want to get the job done. How can I fix this?

[Warren Heaton]

Try running After Affects in Safe Mode for a little while (this uses the default settings).  If that works as expected, you have starting point for troubleshooting your customizations.  

How to manage plug-ins, reset preferences, and launch Safe Mode for Adobe After Effects