Hi Pat,
When Composer crashes, are you getting any error message in the Status Bar? (It's the bottom bar of the Composer window, any message should appear in the lower left.) If you are, please let me know what that is.
If there's no error message, then it may be a driver conflict. What kind of MIDI devices are on the machine, and is there any other software running that might use a MIDI device (eg. instant messaging program, other audio/media players, etc.)?
One way we can isolate some of the issue is to try another MIDI recording application. An easy (and free) one is Red Dot Forever, available for download at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/reddot/ It's a very simple MIDI-recording-only application. If you can use that and record something, then we'll know that the issue is more specifically related to Composer than to the general MIDI interactions on your machine.
(I'm glad I wasn't drinking _my_ coffee at the end of your post
)
ttfn,
Sherry