RoboHelp persistent crash

Hi,

I'm posting this in the desperate hope that someone else has seen this and knows what may be causing it.

I have contacted Adobe Support, but have not yet received a response. Most problems that I have ever encountered have been resolved much more quickly vie the forum, so here goes...

When I launch RoboHelp8, the mouse cursor flickers constantly between an eggtimer and arrow cursor.
When I try to do anything, like open a folder in the Project Manager it is very slow.

A Robo HTML dialog appears with the following message:

"The reference to the file,
C:\working_area\etc\etc\..\xyz.css
from the file
C:\working_area\etc\etc\helpfile.htm
contains ilegal characters and will not be shown in the project manager.
I only get the option to hit OK.
This is normally followed by the crash.

(Note: The aforementioned file IS visible in the project manager and it is not a new file or one that has been updated since the previous version
of my project)

After a short delay, RoboHelp freezes and I get a Windows error message that RoboHelp has been forced to close.
I have tried using a different copy of my source files, with the same results.
I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling RoboHelp, with the same results.
Any ideas what could be causing this and what the solution might be?

I notice there is a file called "$rhvariable$.htm" with a size of 0KB in the top level project directory, which I don't recognize. Is this connected?

Thanks for any help.

Regards,

Feebeegeebee