Constant "not responding" when clicking play

Long time Audacity user. Running 3.3.3 in Windows 10. This problem started late yesterday and has continued all day today. After playing a track once and either I stop it or it finishes, if I click play again it does not play and after a few seconds it displays “not responding.” The close button does nothing and eventually the Audacity screen text turns light blue. The only way to close and exit is to do a control-alt-delete and choose Audacity to close. When I reopen Audacity it shows the file that it closed on and allows me to recover the file, intact. After the recovery, and saving the file, I am able to play it again…one time, then it hangs up again. I have not tried a PC restart yet. All advice is welcome and appreciated. Thank you.

This is a duplicate of your other post here: Can't output any audio file in any format