Premiere Pro stuck opening projects

[Marlman]

We have a team of 6 editors, 4 are editing on PC's and 2 on Mac's. Premiere Pro is failing to open a number of projects on our 4 PC's. It gets stuck loading at anywhere between 69-75% before freezing. Occasionally Premiere Pro also crashes and we have to use Task Manager to end the process. Interestingly our Mac user's are not having this problem at all and are successfully opening the projects we're having problems with. The projects are all semi recent projects (late part of 2022 / early 2023) and the problem only started happening 2 days ago, before that we were having no issues whatsoever with any of the projects. 

The only thing that changed during this period was that we upgraded the RAM in our QNAP NAS server from 8gb to 32gb, and we've determined that this can't possibly be whats caused the issue. Since this has started we've tried multiple things to fix the issue:

Backdate Premiere Pro (to multiple different versions)
Backdate Nvidia drivers
Updating Windows
Trying to open the projects on Windows 10 & Windows 11
Trashing prefs
Changing renderer
Removing plugin's
Clean install of Premiere Pro
Using CC cleaner before reinstallation
Moving files to external SSD's instead of our QNAP server and attempting to open from that (
Moving files to our local drives and attempting to open from that
Contacting Adobe support and having them remotely take over and look around.
Launching Adobe as admin etc.

The only way we've been able to work around this maddening issue is to open the projects on the Mac's, export the project as an XML, make a new project on one of our PC's and import the XML into the new project. After all of this, we can finally get back to working on the projects.

Has anyone else experienced this issue recently? Can anyone think of what could be causing it? I'm guessing it's an conflict between Adobe and Nvidia GFX cards as the problem is only present on our PC's. Surely there's a quicker way to fix this than the XML route. Doing this for countless projects is exhausting.

Our PC's are a mixture of spec, but all running Nvidia GFX cards and Intel CPU's. 3 are on Windows 10 (most recent version) and 1 is on Windows 11.

[Johnathan279096841r4v]

Also having this exact issue. Other treads said to just rollback Nvidia and or Prem and ive done both and its not helped at all. Im at my wits end!

[Peru Bob]

Try a clean installation of the 517.40 Studio Driver (NOT the Game Driver)

[Marlman]

Unfortunately this didn't work, but thanks for the suggestion.

[Marlman]

Small update, the issue isn't fixed but we worked out a lengthly workaround:

We opened the problem projects on Mac (our Macs weren't experiencing the opening project issue at all), save a XML, and then import the XML into a fresh project on our PC's. 

However, this method is less than ideal, it maintained the edit structure but it didnt carry over the Lumetri grade or masks correctly, so we've had to redo the grade and masks. Also, some of the files on the timeline weren't showing a preview in the program monitor, so we had to replace certain clips manually.

Not a quick fix at all, luckily we weren't in a pinch with the deadline.

Because this issue only occurs on our PC's with Nvidia graphics cards, our guess is that the issue has something to do with a conflict between the most recent Premiere Pro update (23.1) and the Nvidia graphics drivers (we tried the most up to date and older versions of the Studio & Game drivers). 

If anyone has any other tips for a quicker fix, this would be welcomed!

[Jiří282455935i77]

Having same issue with new 23.1 premiere after clean install of windows 11 on new disk. 

Tried premiere 22 (version orginal project I am trying to open was created) and it behaves the same. Have nvidia 1660super card with latest nvidia studio drivers. I suspect that newest drivers.. 

[Jiří282455935i77]

Turned, drivers had no impact in my case. Thing that helped was to just wait like 10 minutes. Then it opened. After re-saving, project seems to open normaly.

[Averdahl]

Premiere Pro is failing to open a number of projects on our 4 PC's. It gets stuck loading at anywhere between 69-75% before freezing. Occasionally Premiere Pro also crashes and we have to use Task Manager to end the process.

By @Marlman

@Johnathan279096841r4v @Jiří282455935i77 

This is a long shot, but what happens if you create a brand new project in Premiere Pro and the go to File > Import and then import the old project file into the new project?

This often solves similar issues and is worth trying. If the project is big it will appear that Premiere Pro does nothing for a while when you import the project, but just be patient and wait without clicking anywhere.

If it works, continue to use the new project.

[Comninellis]

Just having this problem for the first time today.

Has anyone else found any solutions?

[Comninellis]

The problem was solved on this Reddit thread!

https://www.reddit.com/r/premiere/comments/1313uly/project_file_wont_open_it_stalls_at_70/?rdt=42882...

FastAd9134 Shared the following advice:

"If using windows, hold down the ALT key and start premiere. A dialogue will pop up. Tick clear plugin cache and press ok. Then open the project."

This solved the problem for myself and many others!

[pbadob]

Where can i find that option "Clear plug-in cache"? I couldn't find it in the dialogue box which popped up.