Bizarre 2: On XP answer file command sometimes hangs

[Dave Cragg]

I've no answer for David Epstein's problem, but I've encountered a 
weird one of my own.

Om XP (SP1), I have a simple utility tool made from the 2.5 engine 
named "makeConfig_2.exe". There is a button on the screen whose script 
has an "answer file" command in the first line of the mouseUp handler. 
I've been using it on and off for a year with no problems until 
yesterday. When I clicked on the button, the app hung before the 
Windows file selection dialog opened. It needed the Task Manager to 
close out. After much pulling of hair, I discovered that if I changed 
the exe name (for example to "makeConfig.exe") it worked. But if I 
changed it back again, it didn't.

During the hair-pulling, I was able to confirm the following:

   -- the original stack worked fine from the IDE.
   -- another exe  which was working fine, displayed the same problem 
when renamed to "makeConfig_2.exe"
   --  renaming the original problem "makeConfig_2.exe" to anything else 
(makeConfi_2.exe, pie.exe, etc.) would make the problem go away.
-- When booted up from NT 4 from a separate drive on the same machine, 
it works.

Norton AntiVirus shows the system to be clean.
No major changes to the machine recently (except for network 
reconfiguration)
Later in the day, the SP2 update failed on the same machine. (might 
indicate a problem)

Any similar experiences or thoughts??

1-- Is "makeConfig_2.exe" a well-known no-no for file naming?
2-- Time to do a complete re-install on this machine?
3-- The house is haunted?

Before 2 though, I'd feel better if I knew what was going on.

Cheers
Dave