[ajk]

I finally got 7.4 working, but I couldn't find the root cause of the original problem.

I created a new user account, tried starting PT from there and was completely surprised to see it starting normally. The problem still exists with my original user account (7.3.1cs5 and all previous versions down to 7.0 never had this problem).

My system is a bit similar to yours, I also have a non-English version of Windows XP Home Edition (in my case Finnish). Also the user account name under which PT is crashing contains Scandinavian characters. I can't say whether the non-English characters cause the problem, because the new user account name doesn't contain any "weird" characters.

Please try if creating a new user account helps in your case and post the result.