RH8 crashes on converting RH7 project...

...please bear with me, this is long: I've successfully converted four significant RoboHelp 7 projects to RoboHelp 8 -- however, I have one that continuously, repeatedly crashes RoboHelp: the conversion itself crashes (maybe 2/3 of the way through), but opens up the project on the next execution of RH8; if I attempt to save changes in most topics, RH8 crashes. If I attempt to preview most topics, RH8 crashes. If I attempt to update DHTML Effects, RH8 crashes.

I can compile (to either WebHelp or FlashHelp), but my "Normal" template (a stub) is replicated at the top of each and every topic in the compiled system. I've gone through the usual hoops (I've been around long enough), including deleting the CPD file, even the baggage, index, TOC and other configuration/parameter files...to no avail. I created a new, blank project and imported one file. RH8 crashed.

However, I can go back and open up any of the other converted systems and they run like clockwork, without a hitch.

The Vista Problem Report listed the crash as:

----------------------------------------------------

Problem signature

Problem Event Name:   APPCRASH

Application Name:           RoboHTML.exe

Application Version:       8.0.0.203

Application Timestamp:                4944f3bb

Fault Module Name:      ntdll.dll

Fault Module Version:   6.0.6002.18005

Fault Module Timestamp:            49e03824

Exception Code:               c015000f

Exception Offset:             0005b80a

OS Version:        6.0.6002.2.2.0.256.1

Locale ID:             1033

Additional Information 1:             fd00

Additional Information 2:             ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160

Additional Information 3:             fd00

Additional Information 4:             ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160

Extra information about the problem

Bucket ID:           1311412229

----------------------------------------------------------

At one point, before I uninstalled and reinstalled Visual Office 2008 on a long shot (try that some time: it's not a trivial task...), I'd received a debug message something like "yada-yada was activated while yad-yada was activated before yada-yada was deactivated" -- I Googled that, and the resolutions were horrific and I'm trying to forget.

After a full work week of  grubbing around, I found the solution to RH8 crashing on save: some topics could be individually saved, most not. I did some file diffs and discovered that a table at the very top of each topic was variously saved by RH7 as either:

<table x-use-null-cells style="width: 100%; x-cell-content-align: Center; border-right-style: Groove; border-right-width: ;

                                border-bottom-style: Groove; border-bottom-width: ; border-spacing: 0px;

                                border-spacing: 0px;" cellspacing=0 width=100%>

...or...

<table style="background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll;

                                background-image: url('Graphics/paper1a.jpg'); border-right-style: Groove;

                                border-bottom-style: Groove;" cellspacing="0" background="Graphics/paper1a.jpg" width="100%">

Topics with the first, crashed RH8. Always. Topics with the second were saved as expected.

OK, so that problem was solved (in a sense)....but, I still have the issue where my template (normal.htt -- which consists solely of a stubbed table as above and now corrected) gets inserted into the top of every published topic. For example:

The template ("Master Page") is a stub: "This is a stub."

In the generated output (local machine, no server/network, running Vista64), every topic begins with "This is a stub" -- even if I delete normal.htt...

I've submitted this as a bug, but would really appreciate any ideas. The first part, above, frazzled me no end--this part is driving me nuts. Again,all other projects have converted just fine and cause no issues.

Thank you in advance...