Cubase freezes when loading projects...

I’m having an issue trying to load a project in Cubase 9.0. As soon as it loads it just freezes and I have to open task manager in order to shut it down. The project loads totally fine in Cubase 8.0 but does the same thing in Cubase 8.5.

I think it has something to do with Kontakt. When I remove kontakt from the plugins folder the session doesnt freeze on load. I’ve tried rolling back to a different version of Kontakt but that doesn’t work either. Very strange issue as I’ve never seen Cubase do this before. Makes me nervous to use 9.0 though.

Windows 10
64gb Ram
i7 6820k
Rme UCX
Evga 1050ti
Samsung 950 pro
Samsung Evo 850 x2
Cubase 8,8.5,9