Hi Claude,

You wrote to (Bob Modic) :

"... Did you solve your problem? It seems that I have the
same issue. I just downloaded the latest guide and it freezes
at startup."

Bob's issue turned out to be related to a corrupted
'comets.dat'. Exactly how it got corrupted is something I
have yet to puzzle out. The code to add new comets to Guide
is rather complicated, because the naming and re-naming of
comets causes all sorts of trouble.

I'm _very_ interested in this subject, though, because
I've had other reports for some time (not just with the
latest version) of startup freezes. If I'm lucky, it'll
turn out that they all relate to this comet problem, and
I'll be able to fix this bug and make several people happier.
But there is an immediate workaround:

I would ask you to first e-mail me the file 'comets.dat'
from your Guide folder, so I can look at it and (I hope) see
a common thread with Bob Modic's 'comets.dat', and then come
up with a bug fix. _After_ sending it to me, download

http://www.projectpluto.com/comets.dat

(about 45 KBytes) and (if I'm right) Guide will start
working again. If I'm _not_ right, please let me know!

Thanks! -- Bill