Cubase crashes

I use cubase 9.0.0 build 92. I have windows 10 (latest updates installed). version 1607.

i5-3450 intel processor 3.10GHz and 32 GB ram.

System was stable until 4 weeks ago when 2 things began to happen:

  1. without warning during playback the sound would go very distorted and very slow (this happened on cubase and other playback apps like media player. Looking at task manager a couple of windows routines had started one called “windows audio graph”. Ending these tasks stopped the problem, however after a short while the issue returned as the routine restarted itself. I haven’t yet found a way to switch it off. This is now a very annoying “feature”. This was swiftly followed by a “serious error” message, not BSOD, but a cubase one. Clicking either OK or cancel left the program hanging with a fast moving blue bar moving backwards and forwards in the “loading mix console”. Only way to solve was to force a close through task manager. This only happened after cubase had opened a project, the project working perfectly. Then I closed the project and opened another and at this stage as it is opening a second project, the problem starts as described above. I’m loading from a shared located with my colleague. I’d like to attach the crash dump file but the system wont let me… Hope someone can help. thanks