I had been having a problem with PPro freezing up with anything less than short CFHD timeline preview renders. This is a new system, and my first project using it.
Nvidea just released new drivers for my graphic card (Quadro 1500). After installing the new drivers EVERYTHING is significantly faster: Windows boot, PPro boot, PPro project loading, rendering, and so on. No more crashes with preview renders either.
I had read somewhere that a large % of non linear editing tech support issues are traceable to graphic card/driver issues