i tried the safe boot - didn't work... i downloaded all the latest updates. looking through the crash logs and various other console log files i've noticed a lot of java crashes - something to the effect of "VM crashed outside native java" and a few others i can't recall righ now...

you mentioned languages... i'm going to check that one because i currently have a few of them set so that i can type in a few different asian languages. i used to have it set simply to "US" but now I actually think its on Australian English with Thai, Japanese, Chinese and Korean all active... will see what happens. know anything about the java crashes or what "VM" is?