Significant Crashing and Saving Issues (PC)

Hello,

I am facing significant issues with premiere pro crashing lately. It has done this pretty much since I started editing with the program, but much worse lately. Here is the main issue I face.

When working on a project, doing Save As for iterative 'new named' versions of that project as I go along, and then when I go to the Save As dialog box one more time (say for "Project_1.5" after "Project 1.4", "Project 1.3" etc.), the Save As dialog box does not respond and forces me to close the application.

HERE'S THE KICKER: When I go back to where I left off, expecting to maybe have lost my work between Project 1.5 and Project 1.4, the prior projects named  Project 1.4, 1.3, etc. are all missing my latest work as well!

I don't understand how I can Save As with multiple iterations of the project file, seemingly creating completely new projects each time on my harddrive, and then when I face a crash, lose my work back through projects I don't even have open....??

As an illustration, it may play out like this:

Project 1.0 - Initial project - drop all my clips in, add my music to the project, hit Save as and Create Project 1.1

Project 1.1 - make some more edits, go a for a few minutes, whenever I get the "autosave" dialog box I then do another Save As, and create Project 1.2. I know now not to trust the autosave of Premiere Pro - Progress Recorded

Project 1.2 - make some more edits. Save as Project 1.3 - Progress Recorded

Project 1.3 - make some more edits. Save as project 1.4.maybe close out of the program and come back to it another day. - Progress Recorded

Project 1.4 - make some more edits. Save as Project 1.5 - Progress Recorded

Project 1.5 - make some more edits. In Saving As Project 1.6. experience a "Not Responding" error in the Save As dialog box, and close out of the program.  - Progress Not Recorded

Revisit the projects and open Project 1.5. It has not reverted back to some earlier version of the project, say Project 1.2. So now it Looks like this

Project 1.0 - Progress Recorded

Project 1.1 - Progress Recorded

Project 1.2 - Progress Recorded

Project 1.3 - Progress NOT Recorded

Project 1.4 - Progress NOT Recorded

Project 1.5 - Progress NOT Recorded

Project 1.6 - Failed to Save

Other contextual items to note:

1) I just edit videos for a hobby. my projects are basically just a bunch of 'home video' of my friends and I traveling, going to the lake etc., with music as the background.

2) They are generally about the length of a song...3-4 minutes. Nothing too fancy.

3) Video clips, cut to the beat of music for the most part

4) 1 to 2 audio tracks (our voices/sounds captured through the camera + one music track)

5) i face these crashes before doing anything I might consider 'resource intensive', like applying color grading to an adjustment layer on top of a lot of clips, or moving a whole bunch of clips along the timeline at once in a group, or having a lot of Altered speed clips near one another without rendering.

6) nonetheless, I also experience the crashes during many of the above 'intensive' actions. for a while I thought that those 'intense actions' were causing the crashes, but it seems they are not the only culprit.

And here are my system specs if that is helpful (on Windows 10 Home 64 bit PC):

Adobe Premiere Pro 2018 CC

AMD Ryzen 7 1700 Eight Core Processor 3.0 GHz

Crucial MX500 500GB SSD

Nvidia GeForce GTX1050

16 GB  G.Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4 -3466 RAM

MSI - B350 Tomahawk AX AM4 Mobo

Let me know what other info is needed. Would really like to get this resolved if you can offer me any help, tweaks, workflow advice, etc.!

Thanks

Michael