A few days ago, SolidWorks started crashing almost every time I opened a part or assembly. Sometimes, opening a less complex sub-assembly first would work, and then I could open the full assembly. Often, this would take a few tries. Once it did open without crashing, I could do open as many things as I like without issue; it was just the first time that gave me trouble. The intermittant nature of the issue made it very difficult to nail down exactly what was happening.

Now, today, I am having a similar problem, but I can't get anything to work. I have tried opening the simplest files I have (a single rod part file, for example) with no success.

The sequence of events: I open SolidWorks 2009 SP3.0. I then select open file. I select any file (it now does not matter what it is, nothing works, and they all behave the same.) The file opens without incident. Now, when I mouse over the part, whatever entity my mouse is over is highlighted as it should be. Here is what is strange. It will seem to be fine until I have moused over exactly seven (7) things. This can mean mousing over a line, then a plane, then back to that line, etc. or over seven completely different entities in a chain. Regardless, and without fail, on the seventh thing, the mouse indicator will freeze as the last thing it was over, indicating a line, point, surface, whatever. I can still move the mouse, but the program is not reacting anymore. The 7th entity remains highlighted, and the program has frozen. If I do nothing, SolidWorks will simply close without any error message or anything. It just closes. If I try to click around, Windows will recognize the program is non-responsive, and open an error box telling me so. It will then allow me to force quit. The same 7 rule applies to mousing over the design tree as well. In fact, even opening a blank part file and mousing over the planes elicits the same exact sequence.

I would attach a file or something, but that seems meaningless since it matters not what part it is.

I am baffled. Any ideas?