Amaya 7.1 on WinXP will no longer start

hi,

As of this morning, Amaya 7.1 on WinXP won't start.  

Amaya was working fine when I left work yesterday, but despite its
uninstall, a Window XP System Restore to two days ago, and three amaya 7.1
reinstalls, Amaya will only flicker on the screen for an instant, then
disappear, when I try to open it.  The only way I can get Amaya to stick
around longer than that is to right click its icon on my desktop, choose Run
As, then Ok (with the defaults: run as Current user and Protect my computer
from unauth. activity).  Amaya will shows its face, so to speak, but doesn't
work: garbage shows up in the location field, I can't open any files, copy
and paste doesn't work, etc.  The only error message I've seen from this
problem so far is when I tried to browse http://w3.org/amaya. I got:

Debug Assertion Failed!  
Program: C:\Program Files\Amaya\Windows\bin\amaya.exe  
File: fopen.c
Line: 54

Expression: *file != _T('\0')

Suggestions?

thanks,
George Herson