I have listed a couple of suggestions below: 1) Could you please try starting "idlde" using the "-outofprocess" switch and see if that helps. This essentially separates the IDL process from workbench (eclipse) process. For example: idlde -outofprocess 2) Do you have a lot of projects in your workspace? If you do try closing all none essential projects and see if that helps with he problem?

Thanks for the quick reply. The -outofprocess flag seems to solve the issue. I haven't run a lot of code yet, but I've successfully executed some common commands I use. Is there any disadvantage of using this option? I have 8 projects open, but each one has dozens or hundreds of files. It would be inconvenient to close many of them. Kim

There are a couple of side affects of using "-outofprocess" that I know about: 1) The graphic windows generated using IDL 8 Graphics (such as plot(),window(),surface(),etc) might not look as good. However, (in my opinion) the "-outofprocess" windows are more functional. 2) Since IDL 8.2, the graphics windows will by default show up above the workbench. If you use "-outofprocess", this will not work because the window order will just be controlled by the operating system.