Thanks for the quick response and it is all working now!
When I submitted question I was thinking it was something similar to the DW crashing of your 3rd response,
but I never tried doing that. I bet it would have worked, but I didn't see that post until after I got it working.
I optimized the PBL as you suggested, but the painter was crashing on any/all functions,
so I didn't want to do the create and delete all of the functions. Way too much work.
But I could create a new function and the painter would open. So I did that to open the painter.
I noticed the open painter window ribbon bar extended in a single line off the end of the window.
I had in other painters added some custom buttons, making the "PowerBar" longer and this pushed the painterbar over.
So I moved the "painterbar" to be under the PowerBar, and thus the ribbon fit in the open window.
In addition I deleted the current layout (under view) and resaved the default layout.
Now the function painter works perfectly.
Again thanks for the responses.
~john
regards.