Hi Lawrence,

> Frankly I am a little 'surprised' with Guide constantly crashing every time
> I use 'update comets and asteroids' followed by 'critical list...' or
> anything else. It has always crashed on me no matter what I select.

Should go away with use of the current software. There were definitely
a lot of issues with those files...

> I always end up having to download the entire MPC file instead of the relevant bit.

Which is, I'm afraid, what the current version ends up requiring (*). The
problem is that efforts to "merge in" MPC data were pretty much doomed; after
years of trying to get it to work, I've gone with just using the full MPC file.

A good current fix is to use the MPECsort program that Clay mentioned. I do
expect to provide another fix, somewhat as described by Denis in an earlier post:
just have Guide switch from MPCORB to any of the various "subsets" that MPC
provides. The result will be that if you tell Guide to display the NEO subset,
you'll get _only_ NEOs; Guide won't try to mix your new NEO data with your old
non-NEO data. (That "mixing" part was the piece that caused so much grief.)

-- Bill