Cannot use windows gnucash - file save crashes app

[Michael Jasiak]

Hi Gnucash list -

   On my first attempt at running gnucash for windows:

1) Every attempt to save hangs - as in, putting in a file name causes
gnucash to hang indefinitely until I hit the red X and windows asks if I
want to send a crash report.  Setting up a new account also hangs when it
asks me to save.  I think it's trying to close some old account file that
doesn't exist, but I can't be sure - I tried to change my paths at first
install to not use my C:\ (for SSD space limit reasons), and everything's
gone wrong since.

2) Windows install data persists even when the app is uninstalled - I mean
*really* persists.  I know this because even after an uninstall gnucash
would still find my D:\  file paths - removing .gnucash and anything in
AppData didn't help; I had to finally resort to gratuitously removing the
gnucash entries I found in the registry.  Even then, I still don't get the
welcome splash screen after cleaning those entries - the "default" save
directory is restored ("Documents") but gnucash still doesn't give me the
"Welcome - try A? B? C?" screen.

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Per #1 - I'm running Win 7 x64 (but only doing a 32-bit install of 2.6.8 -
did not find an x64 binary)
  - I've located the trace in AppData, and it shows the following entries:

* 21:00:30  WARN <gnc.app-utils> Could not spawn perl: Failed to execute
child process (No such file or directory)
* 21:01:48  CRIT <gnc.core-utils> gnc_uri_get_components: assertion 'uri !=
NULL && strlen (uri) > 0' failed
* 21:01:48  CRIT <GLib> g_ascii_strcasecmp: assertion 's1 != NULL' failed
* 21:02:06  CRIT <GLib> g_utf8_to_utf16: assertion 'str != NULL' failed

  - I was trying to save xml only - I did not set up any sqlite or postgres
backend.

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Per #2 - If there's a way to remove all data on uninstall that would be
great - or a doc that describes how.  I've read quite a bit of incredible
documentation while looking for this (which is great!) but I can't find
anything about what ended up installed where.  Thinking I may have done
something wrong at install is reinforced terribly when I remove software
only to find it hung onto my last known settings.

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I hope to give this a try on Mac or Linux, but at the moment my only option
is Win 7.   Anything else you need or want me to try?  I'd love to give
this a go!

Many thanks,
M E Jasiak