Hi Mary,
Your situation is why I left Adobe and moved onto DaVinci Resolve/Fusion. I posted numerous threads on the Adobe forums regarding performance issues after an “upgrade” and the standard response was:
1. Delete Preference file
2. Delete all temporary cached/proxy files
3. Validate correct audio driver
4. Disable GPU acceleration
5. Check GPU drivers are current and “Studio” version (if applicable, nVidia)
6. On Windows PC check System Information under Multimedia Audio Codec and Video Codec
7. Use Codec Tweak Tool (freeware) to check for broken or old Codec
It’s a frustrating experience to do this every time Adobe version update. Sadly the ONLY option above that worked was to use proxies … if you do color grading this isn’t really a good option … hence my departure to DaVinci Resolve which has a far superior color grading process as the nodes are much more flexible than Adobe “layers”.
Best of luck, Rob.