Yes, green, purple, and italics mean the esps can be merged or imported and then deactivated. If you haven't touched the OSR ini, you shouldn't have any stability problems (though I strongly recommend, once you've sorted out your problem, to activate heap replacement - i think it's off by default).
If the load order tips don't help, I would try to remove the OBSE plugins one by one (especially OSR, OBGE, and pluggy, but maybe also algohol and nifscript which I don't use) to see if the problem goes away. I 've just been through the same testing only to find out OSR was badly configured -hence the earlier advice.
when you say OBGE is not active, you mean it's not in the OBSE plugin folder? In case you want to reactivate it, make sure you're using shadeMe's updated version (link in the OP of the OBGE thread).
last thing, I assume you have a 64 bit Windows if you have applied th 4gb patch?
Good luck with your testing