CLION hangs when attempting to find a file path

When I start CLion and attempt to open a new project with existing sources, CLion frequently hangs on the initial attempt to display a desired path.  It seems to be indexing the filesystem, but never returns.

I see that there have been many posts over the last 2 years with similar complaints, but they have not been addressed.

I really like CLion's forward thinking direction, but these bugs are pushing me toward VisualCode.

I am running CLion 18.2.3 on

• CentOS 7.3, [openjdk version 1.8.0_171]
• CentOS 6.6 [java version 1.7.0_79, rhel-2.5.5.3]

I do not have root access to my development server, so I cannot change the JDK, cold boot the machine.  I am confused why CLION does not timeout after 5 seconds and allow me to type in the path to the files for the new project. 

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you