I have been trying to open up a project multiple times over the past two hours and am not having any luck.
Whether I open the project directly from the file in the directory, or by opening up AE and then opening up the project via dialog, the "Opening Project" dialog box never seems to ever go past 0%. I have tried creating a new project and importing the file, but that is not working either. I exported a rather large file earlier and am wondering if that might be why I am having no luck opening this? It was a Quicktime movie file with the Animation codec, which ended up being 180 GB. Would past renders affect opening up the file later on? I wasn't having any issues pre export, and this wouldn't be such a problem if I hadn't noticed some typographical errors in my text.
This is where I am basically banging my head against the wall, wishing I had saved at least two copies of my project. 
Any helpful tips or answers would be greatly appreciated!!
Lenovo Ideapad Y580
Windows 8
8 GB RAM
After Effects CS6 (Creative Cloud) 11.0.0.378