Thank you for the response and the suggestion. (cut to the chase=3rd paragraph)
Just before checking in here to see if there were any clues, I couldn't get ImgBurn to start at all. The same two errors just kept coming up every time I started it, in seemingly random order. I tried it 10-15 times without one successful start. What a weird bug...
As for Alcohol, it hasn't been running, but after going to disable the virtual drive to find out if that had an effect, I discovered I had forgotten that I had already disabled it a few weeks ago. Apologies for the incorrect system status, but thanks for the heads-up on keeping Alcohol from running with ImgBurn;
Anyway, after thinking hard about what could be interfering with the ImgBurn UI, I looked at all running processes in TaskMgr for UI-tampering apps and immediately noticed the free systray-minimizing/window mgmt app, RBTray ( RBTray Homepage )
I end-tasked RBTray, and (after all those errors and failures to start) ImgBurn started fine. I'm going to wait a while longer and try it a few more times, but after testing it quite a few times with RBTray on and off, I'm pretty sure I found the guilty party... Might have to go back to using TaskSwitchXP....
=EDIT=: End-Task kills RBTray.exe but does not kill RBTray.dll (system hook). An hour later, with RBTray.exe not running, the first error appeared once, but on second try loaded normally. Used Sysinternals Process Explorer and found RBTray.dll active under 'Find Handle or DLL'. Seems less troublesome with the .exe terminated, at least. I'll have to reboot with and without RBTray set to load on startup to test it properly.
I wish I did more thorough system troubleshooting before posting this bug report. Hopefully at least this info will turn out to be useful for somebody else having this problem using ImgBurn and RBTray. Will post again if I find out I'm wrong, but until then, maybe there is someone using RBTray and ImgBurn without issues?
- Woolis (whatchoo talkin bout woolis) Beltway