Premiere Pro random freezing and crashing

[ChristinaCph]

Hello,
Hoping to find a solution to an issue while using Premiere. The details below.

Lately, I’ve been experiencing some serious problems with Premiere Pro. (Using the latest version available - 25.1.0 Build 73 on a Windows 11 PC). While I’m smoothly editing, all of a sudden everything freezes, the whole screen turns black. Sometimes it unfreezes after a few moments and other times it never unfreezes so I have to force shut-down my PC. When the freezing doesn't happen, I run into another issue—video playback/preview randomly turns black or white, and I have to restart Premiere to fix it. Moreover, I sometimes get crash reports when I have just opened a project or while I’m working on it. I’ve also been experiencing some blue screens. They’re not very frequent, but I’ve had about five in the past two weeks.

Things I’ve tried to resolve the issue:

- Cleaned all media cache files (and most of video previews)

- Updated both NVIDIA and Intel drives  

- Focused on using Premiere only without any other programs open

- Cleaned my PC’s fans with a blower from dust that had built up

Device specifications:
Processor 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700 2.10 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.8 GB usable)
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

I’d be happy to provide more information if needed.

Thank you,
A desperate video editor.

[MarekMularczyk]

Hi,

Have you tried resetting Premiere preferences? This would give you a "fresh start" 😉

[ChristinaCph]

Hello,
Thank you for taking the time to reply.

I forgot to mention that I already tried resetting Premiere's preferences. While it may have helped a bit - the random freezing kept happening, just not as frequently as before.

Update: I reached out to support, where another expert looked into the issue and I followed the recommended steps to fix it. I'll keep working on my projects to see if the problem is finally resolved.

[MarekMularczyk]

Ok. Let us know how it goes. Fingers crossed 😉

[ChristinaCph]

Update 2: I had high hopes of this working and at first I thought it worked but it turns out the issue is still there. At least I can work longer this time before it decides to freeze again.  

[Peru Bob]

Is the NVIDIA driver a Studio driver, not a Game driver?

[ChristinaCph]

I believe it's a Studio driver since I've been installing that for every update.