"what happens is that as soon as my cursor goes anywhere near the font selection
drop-down the whole thing crashes and I have to use task manager to shut down XP..."

Hello everyone,
I've been a time traveler of sorts lately. I've been trying to install and use
ancient software (back to the xp era) on windows 10. Once something is installed
I've run into several problems just trying to use the stuff. One particular
problem I've run into is just trying to browse to find folders and files.
Browsing involves clicking to open a drop down list. With one particular old
app everytime I clicked to browse the app froze or returned a crazy error message
(I won't go into here). Only task manager would close the app. But I finally
(for this app) found an admittedly bizarre solution. Before running the app I
made sure the recycle bin was empty. If it wasn't I emptied it. Sometimes this
did the trick. Other times it was necessary to do one more strange thing.
I opened task manager and restarted file explorer. After doing one or both of
these things browsing was possible in the app.
Font selection and browsing seem like the same operation to me. Twenty million
lines of code in the os. Anything is possible. Maybe worth a shot
Best,
steve