Accessing "User Preferences" causes Blender to shut down.

Accessing "User Preferences" causes Blender to shut down.
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I've been experiencing this phenomenon for some time, but I thought it might be my labtop acting up.
Just downloaded 2.72b and it still acts up on my labtop. I do not experience any problems on my desktop computer. They both run on windows 64 bit, vista.

What I do is this (default blender setup):

Blender up
From the FILE pulldown menu - choose [User preferences[/b].
Blender shuts down .

But - if I pull down the top "window" and change that into User Preferences , it works just fine.


Has anyone experienced this as well or should I consider this a local issue (on my computer)?

Sorry, I just don't have any experience with laptops. I might give it a go on my wife's defunct machine.