Ok, thanks for your suggestions. Here's what happened when I tried to do what you suggested.
The first time I tried this (i.e., first time opening DW CS4 during the current session, first time trying to create a new CSS Sculptor page), I saw HTML2Image.exe appear for a couple seconds, and then disappear, all by itself. On subsequent attempts (i.e., always after restarting DW after it freezes up along with the Sculptor dialog box), if the HTML2Image process popped in on the list in Windows Task Manager, it was too quick for me to see, even when watching for it. I do see a dllhost.exe listed as a COM surrogate popping in. But as far as HTML2Image.exe is concerned, I believe that it wasn't appearing after the first time. What is appearing every time, at the same time, however, is a cmd.exe process, each time I try to pick a layout in the Sculptor dialog. This is, I think, when things are freezing up, at least after the initial attempt.
I'm hoping this is a significant clue. The cmd.exe process lingers on in Task Manager, and is not killed, but rather, is stranded when Dreamweaver is ultimately closed. With each additional attempt (i.e., after freezing and restarting DW), I get another additional cmd.exe process sitting around in Task Manager.
This is all happening while running Dreamweaver.exe as Administrator.
And of course, no preview yet. Double-checked, and I do not have previews disabled in the Edit WebAssist Preferences checkbox. During testing, Sculptor was the only extension that was enabled. Neither SiteAssist Pro nor CSS Menu Writer were installed. Several other extensions were installed, but none were enabled in Extension Manager CS4.
And maybe this can help, a copy of the most recent Sculptor.log (after the last test and resulting freeze):
---------------------------------
Start time: 1252690841085
0 : command Invoked
614 : start initializeUI
1 : check serial
0 : loadCopyright
7483 : after autosave
1 : after updateUI()
68 : after tab2 subtab
0 : after mac style
210 : after loadedOnce
33 : designs loaded
86 : presets populated
414 : presets loaded
25 : post output settings
894 : after buildWAUI()
472 : start layout tab
851 : end layout tab
-----------------
End time: 1252690852237
total time: 11152
Thanks very much for keeping on with this and giving it more consideration. I've got my fingers crossed for more ideas...!
