FX chain problems: bug or not?

I think I misspoke earlier about the culprit button. I have just been a bit more careful. I did a more through set of experiments. Each one started with all of the steps below. 1) a delete of users/AppData/Roaming/REAPER 2) a reinstall of REAPER v2.58 (I know a bit excessive) 3) a run of REAPER (reset configuration to factory defaults) 4) yes on the popup asking if I want to reset to factory defaults 4) close on the license window (I will have to re-find my license info now) 5) options -> preverences -> VST 6) enter the dir which has nothing in it but VNoPhones.dll 7) set or unset a few buttons below the two scan buttons 8) hit rescan or clear and rescan. Only 7 or 8 varied. Bottom line: either "rescan" or "clear and rescan" ALWAYS freezes if "Get VST plug-in names/types when scanning" is checked and they NEVER freeze if that button is not checked. I was wrong about the other buttons before. I don't know another VST that does this. In any case no .ini file ever had a chance to mess things up in the scenario above. AND ... If the "get names" button is unchecked and VNoPhones is brought in, then it is available and works, BUT ... The first time I exit REAPER with VNoPhones in an FX chain Windows says that the program stopped running and gives an error window inviting me to terminate the program. However, if I terminate and then restart REAPER and exit a second time with VNoPhones in the chain, there is no problem with the next exit (or any succeeding exit). We are definitely in the "bug" zone here, but the question is whether the fault is VNoPhones or ... Are there different versions of VNoPhones.dll out there? It did not look like it. All I found were the same length.

thanks 

Thanks for all the details. It is clear that the number of variables is exploding rapidly. I don't see it as practical (and perhaps not feasible) to chase this down. I confess little of what I observe makes sense. However, I am getting used to that fact.

parts make sense 

At least the fact that the checked "get VST plug-in names/types when scanning" contributes to the freeze makes sense. When that is checked a partial "run" of each plug-in is done during the scan. When not checked, no such partial run is done. With VNoPhones, that partial run causes the freeze. If I get the energy I will try to roll out the drivers for the various sound devices and roll them back in one at a time. I believe that there was a specific order to putting them in that I might have ignored on installation. :)