[veneman]

Dear Sherry,

It crossed my mind that my own configuration is very richly loaded with applications. Going back a some restore points does not make sense.
But my neighbour has bought Composer too and installed on a brand new Windows 7 system, no further apps installed. He has exactly the same problems.

While on mu previous configurations with XP and Vista I did not have this problem. So I have just done a test with the Windows 7 compatitiblity tool Run File Explorer, got to the composer directory, right click on composer.exe, left click on Solve Compatibility Problems,
Start the analyses.
It found that it indicates compatibility issues, and advices to run Composer in Windows XP SP3 mode. Then click on continue and save to run Composer alway in XP-SP3 mode.

Problem is solved as far as I can see (with 2.5.2 and 2.61)

Cheers Jaap Veneman