Game crashes when starting any replay

I've been tinkering with a lot of settings in an effort to get my UI exactly how I want it (arranging panels, turning on Smooth icon Transition, etc). Playing a match seems to work fine, skirmish seems to work fine, but loading a replay causes a "Spring Is Not Responding" crash as soon as the match map appears on screen. Not sure what settings I've altered that caused this as I haven't tried to load a replay until just tonight. 4 different replays all cause the crash. Tried restarting PC, tried validating steam installation. Any help on rectifying this would be appreciated. I'm hoping to avoid having to nuke all of my custom settings As I've just gotten them all dialed in over the course of multiple hours. I'll post the end of my Infolog_full file here:

[t=00:02:21.420492][f=-000001] [Game::ClientReadNet][LOGMSG] sender="FrequentPilgrim (spec)" string="[PE::CalcChecksum][BLK_SIZE=16][SHA_DATA=112444dc59e63615585a20fa6bbe4393373b444d512e66d3d22c17384b199e78b0f231fcea419af10455a88e909f86067d237c22406869dab795da45fe9a1c05]"
[t=00:02:21.420509][f=-000001] [Game::ClientReadNet][LOGMSG] sender="FrequentPilgrim (spec)" string="[PE::CalcChecksum][BLK_SIZE=32][SHA_DATA=1d5cf5ccaae317e11080136372a6b396f9edb43f54844d062b2d4135f556e216250eb6108431b0b17347bd42a4f0d9106831d85489c5ec20829ea07d3d73676c]"
[t=00:02:21.420548][f=-000001] [Game::ClientReadNet][LOGMSG] sender="FrequentPilgrim (spec)" string="[Game::Load][lua{Rules,Gaia}={000001dca30f6a40,0000000000000000}][locale="C"]"
[t=00:02:21.420559][f=-000001] Spectator FrequentPilgrim (spec) finished loading and is now ingame
[t=00:02:21.517819][f=-000001] Epicmenu: Switching to Default camera mode


Zero-K.exe Information: 0 : ZkData.TcpTransport socket disconnected: Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.
Zero-K.exe Information: 0 : Chobby closed connection
Zero-K.exe Warning: 0 : Exception shutting down discord-RPC: System.BadImageFormatException: An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007000B)
at DiscordRpc.Shutdown()
at DiscordController.Dispose()
Zero-K.exe Warning: 0 : Spring exit code is: -805306369, user-killed during hang
Zero-K.exe Information: 0 : Spring exited

Yes, I just started a single player skrimish vs AI. resigned and then tried to watch the replay. Game crashes right after loading just like all other replays. I've also uninstalled and reinstalled the game through Steam with no change.

Also, live spectating appears to be fine. It's just the first tick of the game after loading a replay that crashes.

i advise you copy your settings files.. then reset them to default or delete them and see if your out-of-the-box setup has the same issue?

it sounds almost like its possibly a file acess / permissions violation.. perhaps the install location is protected by some antivirus software or file permissions wierdness?