Thank you both for your replies.
Just to provide some perspective, before I retired I spent many years in IT support, mainly to small business. I have used and am familiar with quite a few operating systems. I have been using this particular 64-bit Windows 8.1 PC for about a year and it has been trouble-free in all that time despite running numerous different applications. I'm not a gamer and I keep a good eye on the system's health. I only mention this so we can save time on the elementary stuff and hopefully indicate that this isn't some poorly configured, Malware ridden box of junk being driven by a beginner. However...
That said, clearly something is wrong and I have been unable to sort it out by myself. I have a passing familiarity with a number of languages, but Python is not one of them.
In answer to your questions...
1. Are there specific actions you took which lead to the lockup?
A: There were a couple of times I was able to take an action or two within Cura immediately after starting it, but for the most part any action at all, even just a mouse click on a blank area, brings up the blue doughnut (busy icon) which cycles forever. The application must be forced to close.
ALSO: The Cura User Manual shows a "print bed" image loaded into the cell on the right-hand side of the screen. For me that cell is always just a blank square when Cura starts:
2. I use WIN7, WIN8.1, and WIN10. Also mac OSX YOSEMITE all appear fairly stable to me, and believe me I push them hard...
A. Are any of them running on a 64-bit machine?
