ID CS4 book crashes when imported Illustrator graphics encountered

Question

I'm testing my first InDesign book (.indb) , and InDesign is crashing whenever it encounters anything but the simplest placed Illustrator CS3 file. This happens even when there is just one file in the book! I've tried using the "Export Book to PDF" command, printing to a .ps file, and printing to a real printer. No luck. The files in the book all distill and print fine individually. I've tried both .ai and .eps formats, but it doesn't make any difference. If I delete the Illustrator files from the ID files, the book distills without problems.
I'm using a downloaded trial version of CS4. Could that be the problem? We are running these tests to see if it would be possible to convert some of our documents from FrameMaker to InDesign. So far, it looks like the answer is no.  8-)
Other than that, I'm using Windows XP Professional.
Many thanks.

Answer 1

Good Morning, Mr. Spier --
First, you are much more than kind to take an interest in this. I 
can't thank you enough.
How much free drive space do you have? How much RAM?
Drive space: tons
RAM: 3 GB
Are these really complex vector files?
In some cases yes, but often no. These are technical illustrations. 
But here's the thing: When I remove them from the ID CS4 files, 
crashing ceases. But when I place them in a new file, with nothing 
else in it, they will usually distill from within the book. I've tried 
stripping out any non-graphic element that might somehow conflict with 
the illustrations -- e.g.,  master page items that contain user-
defined variables and conditional text -- but nothing seems to help. 
When I rasterize the illustrations and bring them in as tiffs, no 
problem. But again, all these files distill just fine when handled 
individually.
Any chance you could poast a sample somewhere and give us a link to 
it for testing on other systems? What you are describing is far from 
normal.
Yes, I have an ftp site. But before I pester you, I'm trying to 
arrange some off-site testing now. The illustrator who created the ai 
files is going to do a test on a Mac of a small subset of files (that 
nevertheless crashes on my system).
And this morning I've emailed a colleague who has CS4 on a Windows 
machine. I want to see how things behave on her system. I'll report 
back.
Also, I've attached a PDF of one of the files just so you can see what 
I'm working with. Note the logo in the upper left corner. This is 
always the element that crashes InDesign. When I remove it, the large 
illustration in the body of the page causes the crash. (For the 
record, this is one of the simplest illustrations.) The icon in the 
upper right corner and the logo in the running footer don't crash. 
Oddly, these are both old eps files.
Again, most sincere thanks for your above-and-beyond kindness.
     --Donna Reynolds