I had this problem today,for some reason my antivirus had blocked it from connectin to the internet.

When i allowed it to connect it started working fine again.

@Muckyman, I didn't realize it needs to connect to the internet just to set the configuration.  I'll try adding it to the AV safe list.

@Neil, I hadn't added any folders but I just tried reducing the list to the only one that actually has .dream files. 

Ok, made both changes and it still freezes while never showing the preview.  I know it depends on DirectX.  I downloaded the latest version and the install said it's already installed.  I might try unistalling and reinstalling DirectX next. 

You might consider updating or re-installing video drivers.  Video drivers have fixed me up a couple of times on DeskScapes (ATI).  Don't know why it might appear all of a sudden for no apparent reason though.

Well here's a couple of admittedly hair-brained ideas from the peanut gallery-

Since you've reinstalled Vista and Vista has all that UAC and "run-elevated" stuff, I'm wondering if your permissions etc might no longer be up to par.  Will the DeskScapes config work if you run it from the StartMenu launcher with a right-click "Run Elevated" option (instead of from a desktop right-click)?

Also, if you restored the dreams and the dreams extraction folder via backup software, I've run into the problem before where the new user, even if it's an Admin, can't read the restored files until I've gone through a "take ownership" process (on XP).  Obviously you can read the dreams you've directly executed so far, but I'm wondering if it might be an issue in the extraction folder or maybe with some of the dreams you haven't loaded yet.  If DeskScapes is trying to read something and can't, it would probably stall.

Ya, it's a little bit of a stretch.

@Wizard, deleting that folder seems to have helped some.  I can now select a dream or a few and they display properly before the program crashes.  I'll unistall and reinstall next and update this post.

Dang.