INDD CS 3 crashes soon after, or at (5.03) startup

Question

Hello, I have read through the "InDesign CS3 crashes upon launch" thread and will continue to search through the forums and the KB, but I am desperate and hoping for some help quick.
After working fine last time I used it (a couple of weeks ago), now, soon after starting up and making a couple of changes in a document, InDesign CS3 hangs (Not Responding) then gets a strange-looking window with a thumbnail graphic of (looks like) an Explorer window (?) - no words, then the Windows Error message that INDD has stopped working, Windows is checking for a solution to the problem, A problem has caused INDD to stop working, Close program. Same thing with several different document or if I start a new document.
The difference since using it last time may be that I tried to clear some disk space in order to install Vista SP1, and I could have deleted some necessary files I suppose. However, uninstalling and reinstalling INDD has not helped. (Installing SP1 was ultimately unsuccessful, and I have given up on that.)
I will also try system restore (hoping there is a restore point to go back to) but since I am desperate and short on time, I am putting out the cry for help now since you all have been so helpful in the past and of course it is the weekend and of course I must do this job this weekend and cannot wait for Tech Support on Monday. Thank you all in advance.
System is Windows Vista Ultimate with Intel integrated graphics and 1 gb RAM.
Things I tried so far:
1. uninstalled, restarted then reinstalled Indesign
2. changed default printer to PDF (then XPS)
3. deleted SING folder
4. renamed Indesign Defaults to Indesign Defalts.old
5. deleted recovery data when prompted
6. installed 5.0.3 update.
Actually after 5.03 things have changed. Now the program doesn't even start up (crashes at intializing plugins splash screen).
Theano

Answer 1

Ken,
I'm not familiar with DIX, but it sounds like a good product. I use Acronis True Image 11 ($49.99 at www.acronis.com and you can download a 30 day trial) along with two different backup drives, an internal 200 gb that gets the images from my 100gb system partition once a week (OS and programs don't change often), and an external 500 gb Maxtor ($99.99 at Tiger direct http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3617656&sku=M1 22-7816 )which gets a nightly image from my data drive.
Acronis supports both internal and external hard drives and opticals (and floppies, but...)and allows full, incremental, or differential backups on any schedule you choose, as well as individual file backup and restore and drive cloning. All of these things can be done from the installed program, or from a bootable CD, and the interface is identical whether running under Windows or from the CD, which allows you to view the contents of any drive on the system before you make a move, unlike the old version of Ghost I used.
It has a "try and decide" function, if you have the space, which clones your system into a virtual partition and track the changes while you do an installation or such, and if you decide you don't like what's going on you simply abandon it and no change to the system is made. There's also a "recovery manager" feature you can enable that allows you to run the application at boot, as if you'd used the CD, but it keeps my system from starting at all (see below) and is pretty redundant if you have the CD.
The only issue I've had is it uses a Linux OS on the startup disk (I think), and because I have 8 IDE channels set up it shuffles drive letters on my system when using that interface. In spite of what both the BIOS and windows think, it always shows my boot drive as D: and something on the add-in primary channel as C:, but once I figured it out things have gone smoothly. Having the startup manager installed was doing the same thing at boot, and there was no OS on the drive that was being called C:, so no boot to Windows. Although they didn't solve it for me, the folks at tech support were pretty helpful.
Peter