This updating of the reference files is I think a bit of a red herring. That seems to be just a minor symptom of a larger problem that you are having. ProjectWise should NOT crash and this is a behavior you should not have to live with. Please contact Bentley Support or have your ProjectWise Administrator contact Bentley Support to report this so that it can be investigated and resolved. Bentley Support can also look into the time it takes to open a drawing from ProjectWise. There are lots of factors that impact this(where the PW Integation Server and storage areas are relative to the user are a big one) and there are several configuration options that can increase the performance based on your organizations specific scenario(which is why the defaults may not be best for your workflow)
Just to reinforce the point, ProjectWise should not crash,but the only way we can address it is if we know about and your team is willing to help gather information to resolve the problem and prevent your staff from having a bad ProjectWise day.
If you are not certain how to get in touch with Bentley Support send me a private email through Be Communities and I will get you connected with them.
John