first time I thought it was the new ext hard drive I was using. Then a month later, while opening aperture, it gave an error message. I repaired permissions on main computer. Next, tried to repair permissions on Aperture Library permissions. It gave me a message that I needed to “rebuild database” After that was done, the vault sill hangs there. I also removed the aperture plist a month earlier. Currently in the process of exporting separately each year, then running vault to see if I can narrow where the problem is. Is this a common problem? I was also wondering about exporting out of aperture for another form a backup. thanks for any help.