this thread has nothing to do with crashes

My bad. meant hangs, not crashes. Windows doesn't report an app crash, just an app hang. (fails to respond.) Fixed in my previous post now.
Also of note: starting the client with the -console option provides a pause initially upon hang, and then the console reports back the following about every second: (stripped of date/time stamp.) (Also shows up in errorlog.txt) It makes me wonder if there is some kind of inability to deal with network traffic either during whatever happens during the hang, or perhaps the network code is causing it? Just guessing here as I don't know of any changes in the networking code between 0.5.7. and 0.5.6, which seems to have been relatively free of this hang.
<..\..\src\common\net\netbase.cpp:1406 NetBase::QueueMessege SEVERE>
*** Input Buffer Full! Yielding for packet, client 0, type MSGTYPE_DEAD_RECKONING, input queue 0!
Also manage some hiccups with the following info, but did not hang.
<..\..\src\client\psclientdr.cpp:223 psClientRD::HandleDeadReckon SEVERE>
Got DR nessage from unknown entitiy EID:##### (Where ##### is a number that varies, such as 10430, or 10577)