Paint.NET consistently fails to open

[ChrisERAU]

Ever since the last big update to Paint.net (v4.0?) sometime last year, Paint.net has been crashing somewhat randomly when I try to load it. It's gotten so bad now that I can't get it to stay open without getting a "Paint.net has stopped working" error message.  I'm on Windows 7 64 bit, by the way.

 

Here's what I do:

1. Click Paint.net shortcut 
2. Paint.net programs opens
3. Immediately upon opening, the "paint.net has stopped working" error box pops up
4. I'm forced to click "close" on the error message, and paint.net closes

 

When I try to open paint.net by right-clicking on a picture and selecting Open with... > paint.net, paint.net won't even come up. Nothing happens. 

 

I ran the .NET framework repair process, updated the nvidia drivers, uninstalled and reinstalled paint.net (v4.05), restarted roughly 10 million times, but none of this solved the issue. 

 

Obviously I can't get a bug report from paint.net itself, but I saw what's going on in Windows' Event Viewer:

 

Faulting application name: PaintDotNet.exe, version: 4.5.5454.39504, time stamp: 0x5484cd44

Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 6.1.7601.18247, time stamp: 0x521eaf24

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x00000000000508c5

Faulting process id: 0x140c

Faulting application start time: 0x01d05959751f5948

Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Paint.NET\PaintDotNet.exe

Faulting module path: C:\Windows\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll

Report Id: b2dc8dca-c54c-11e4-9762-b888e305d191

 

It's the same error 100% of the time. Is the ntdll.dll corrupt? 

Please help!

Edited March 8, 2015 by ChrisERAU