argh, it’s not usually so hard to communicate!
No bugs!!! It was caused by my moving the startup.blend file from earlier config folders to later ones. Who knows why? Doesn’t matter. I’ve read of others having similar issues with this trick to save rebuilding user prefs and they just stopped trying.
I discovered this because I carefully read the instructions for reporting bugs. Then I figured because I tend to play with experimental builds also I had corrupted files. The only way to guarantee it’s a problem in the code was to use files generated by the original releases.
I downloaded 2.49 release, saved a file, imported it into 2.62, no issues!
I did this for a bunch of releases and found no problems. No reportable bugs using the standard releases. So I DID try to report a bug but found I couldn’t repeat anything using the recommended methods.
I stared at the version I’m working with (2.62 r44231, the latest build I can find before bmesh) trying to understand what was different, then realised it was not coming up default but using a startup.blend I had copied from earlier versions. I deleted it and the version I’m using started working correctly. Since that startup.blend has an unknown history of exposure to both earlier versions and experimental builds, it just won’t be worth investigating by a coder. I’ve written enough code and had problems with corrupted databases to know this is a dead end for investigation. (I’m calling the info in a .blend file the database)
Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll upload the startup.blend I am using and will report the issues I encountered as bugs.
Geeze, I really thought my previous post was going to terminate this thread, hate to see people still dwelling on it. I’m not. I do appreciate those trying to help. I feel like I planted a bad seed and now I’m desperately trying to stamp it out, but I can’t stop others from continually watering it. Maybe I should change my handle to TheAccidentalTroll 
