I took a roughly 5-month break from NS2. Since reinstalling, I now have major issues with the game's stability.

Upon loading into a server, textures (including UI elements like the map and its icons) will take several minutes to load in, with most remaining blurry (environment) or 100% black (weapons and structures) for an extended period of time.

Prior to reinstalling (ie before said 5-month break), the same thing would happen but be resolved within ~30 seconds of loading in to a server, with no significant hanging and without crashing.

Now, at the point the textures fully load in, one of two things happen: The game will stop responding and crash, or it will hang long enough to cause a time-out with the server.

The most common point at which the game crashes is after loading into spectator from the server browser/main menu, or switching to a first-person view from spectator.

Sometimes it'll all be fine. Particularly if I manage to get into the ready room from spectator in an ongoing round, or if I've made several attempts at joining a server without the game hard-crashing.

I've tried unsubscribing from all workshop items (I used Kouji-San's crosshairs and LE weapon skins), reducing the texture quality and texture memory allocation and changing the CPU priority of the game, to no effect.

Specs:
Intel Q9550 oc'd @3.6ghz
8gb DDR2 RAM
Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti (4gb VRAM)
Asus P5Q-PRO