Okay... I found the problem. I believe the ACTUAL problem was that I had too many ptn files in my Favorites.

After reading everything I could find in the forum, I didn't see anything that actually matched the problem I was having. However, in one of the posts, there was a discussion concerning the performance of Designer being affected by the size of your "Favorites".

On a hunch, I did a little house cleaning. When cleaning up my favorites, I noticed something strange... I had 2 "Favorites" folders.

Since I knew the "Favorites" were contained in an "mpn" file, I did a search on my harddrive until I found the location. I discovered that I had a "favorites.mpn" file AND a "favorites14866.mpn" file in my "c:\documents and settings\my_computer_user_name\CarveWright" folder. How the second file got there is anyone's guess.

Once I moved the "favorites14866.mpn" out of the folder, only one "Favorites" showed up on Designer (Duh!).

My Pattern Editor now starts up with no problem.

I do still have 2 "Basics" folders on Designer, but I could only find one "Basics.mpn" file on my computer.

Oh well, time for more searching... but at least my Pattern Editor opens... I've got THAT going for me!

Steve