Loading/Startup Game Performance Issues when in Editor

Hello, I am editing my game (built on VRTemplate) in UE 5.0.3 and suddenly there is quite the performance hit specifically when hitting Play and when Closing the level (all in UE Editor, NOT packaged build). After hitting play, it takes a while to load up.
I’m not sure what I did that suddenly cause this but tis error pops up in the Output Log a lot:
Warning: DeleteFile was unable to delete ‘C:/Users/User/Documents/Unreal Projects/…/Saved/Config/WindowsEditor/[].ini’, retrying in .5s…
Followed by
Error: Error deleting file ‘C:/Users/User/Documents/Unreal Projects/…/Saved/Config/WindowsEditor/[].ini’.
[]=includes Editor, EditorPerProjectUserSettings, Compat, RuntimeOptions, Hardware etc.

Im not sure if this is the root of the performance issues. I never checked the output log previously as things were working fine. But I suppose this would be a start to debugging the sudden loading performance issues I am having.
I am also running Perforce that I set up myself if that is useful information.

Any advice on how to handle this? Thanks!

EDIT: I just tested with a slightly older file (a couple of days old) and it works just fine. Hitting play loads it up almost instantly. I am also not observing the Warning & Error I had mentioned.