Paintstormstudio.com

I'm trying to hard to love Paintstorm Studio but I just can't. The program is constantly freezing every few minutes for about 10 seconds. I simply cannot work like this. If I can't find a solution to this, then I may as well scrap the $20 license and go back to Photoshop.
When it comes back, I notice the little cursor popups that appear in other applications appear while holding Alt, Ctrl, etc. I have to switch windows before regaining normal tablet functionality.

At first I thought it was the autosave function, since it seemed to be happening about every 10 minutes. I decreased the autosave time to 1 minute, and sure enough, I was getting minor hangs every 1 minute, albeit much shorter. I figured the 10 minute autosave was enough time to rack up enough changes that it would take a moment saving the file, and so lowering it to 1 minute would reduce the amount of changes to save to the file. But nope, it just did it again - the program froze while I was using it for about 10 seconds, just as described above.

I greatly appreciate any support.

It could be some HDD access hangouts, Paintstorm writes some information to HDD from time to time, if HDD freezes - Paintstorm freezes too. ALso maybe some antivirus trying to check it every time, I don't know. The other reason - some tablet drivers issue - try to change USB port for your tablet.

I've not had any other applications hang during HDD access, not even Photoshop or any of my 3D applications. Not even Maya, which is notorious for issues. lol
I also just use Windows Defender. Generally speaking, I don't really need anything else. No other applications have had any issues running with Windows Defender, to my knowledge.
I guess driver could be an issue. I'm sure we're all familiar with just how... bad... Wacom's drivers can be at times. Although I'm hesitant to try updating the driver, seeing as every update usually breaks something.
I'll continue using Paintstorm and try to troubleshoot the issue more as I go. It's difficult to troubleshoot and debug, considering I can't seem to trigger the issue directly; it seems to occur on its own at a seemingly set interval. However, I'll be getting a new tablet on Monday - an XP-Pen display - so at that point, I'll probably stop using my Wacom completely.

If this is related to HDD access, there's gotta be something causing it. What is Paintstorm doing so frequently that requires HDD access and is enough to cause it to hang? None of my other applications have this issue.
I doubt it would be antivirus. Again, none of my other applications have these issues. I use Windows Defender; I don't really need anything else.
I was using a Wacom Intuos tablet when I first started using Paintstorm. On Tuesday, I got an XP-Pen Artist 13.3, and I still experience this issue. I doubt this is a tablet driver issue.

I just can't see how HDD, antivirus, or driver would be causing this. Do you have any other ideas? I'm open to pretty much anything, as long as I don't end up having to reinstall Windows or some other drastic action.