When I select a filter equation in the DTE the drop down menu comes up but the background changes to the materials lab, I click to select a filter from the menu and then the background switches back to the DTE. After that Bryce will seemingly just stop responding. Should I just reinstall?

Deep Trouble Editor!!!

What is happening I think is the window is being pushed back behind the screen and you can't access it. Problem is once in the DTE you can't minimize Bryce to get to that window. It's a bug that they haven't fixed.

If it's the same one I'm thinking about. I noted this problem to a couple of Coral's beta testers, and they supposedly reported it to coral. Try using the Esc key when the window drop behind. I haven't had it do it, as you describe, but I have had windows drop behind other windows, where they couldn't be accessed.

Strange, b5 does this on my win98 machine, but it doesn't lock up. As soon as I release the key, the dte pops back up and works normally...

A similar thing happens to me sometimes when ctrl-alt clicking on color tabs. The Color-window doesn't shut down, it only goes to the background and hides itself. After that bryce also gets slow and will eventually stop responding. Usually Alt-tab returns you to the hidden color-window wich can then be closed and bryce runs fine again. Maybe you can try the same trick to close the 'hidden' DTE windows. I never had the problem you described, but mine sounds very similar. especially next to what Aldaron said.

Thanks for your input everyone. I'll give your suggestions a try as soon as I'm back at my computer.