[Duane Francis]

I’ve been having the same problem with Movie Studio 6 and 7 Pro, for about the past 8 months. Before that, both had been trouble-free for several years. I’ve found a few dozen forums threads on this problem here and elsewhere, going back to 2004 or so, from people using every version of Sony Vegas from at least 4 through 9. But none of them seems to come to a real solution.

For what it’s worth, I discovered that the programs do start up if I wait long enough – usually between 10 and 15 minutes. It also happens (for me) only on the first startup after booting the computer. From then on, I can exit and restart either program in the blink of an eye. Turning off my anti-virus seems to make the process somewhat quicker. Also, Sony does have a customer support page on the problem as it relates to the “Studio” products, with about a dozen suggested solutions:

https://www.custcenter.com/cgi-bin/sonypictures.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1382&p_created=1147269571

I just found that page yesterday, and haven’t had time to work through the suggestions.

I have a faint, sneaking suspicion that this is caused by a conflict with something included in an update of the .NET Framework from Microsoft. It started for me after I had not used either version of Vegas for about ten days, and those updates from Microsoft were the only things I can think of that had been changed or added during that period. But that’s just a guess, and I doubt that it would explain the behavior others were experiencing in 2004.