I think that you are right.   The colour picker is unfeasibly annoying, at the best of times.   Thanks.   The weird thing is that I have carried on using it for years (and banged my head against the wall every time).    The odd thing is that, whereas, up to now, I was constantly picking up grey by mistake, presumably because that is Poser's background shade (which I have been too lazy to change in any of the last six or seven releases), now I always get grey.   

Yes, dumping the picker sounds like much better advice than re-installing.   Thanks, again.