Do you have an older version of AWLS installed? It had a corrupt mesh that leady to excactly the problems you describe.
BTW, posting you mod list is always a good idea when suspecting mod conflicts.
Ooh, yes, I have put off updating AWLS for a while, I'm at 5.1.0 and the newest version is what, 5.1.5? Hopefully that's it. I refrained from putting in the mod-list because I didn't really want to bother people when I hadn't done more than verify that the crash was consistent, that is to say, I felt that I should put some more work into searching for the conflict myself before trying to push it onto others. I was just hoping that someone might have an inkling, so that I could investigate certain types of mods instead of systematically checking all of them... and as it turns out, someone did have a fairly good inkling
I will put it to the test tomorrow, for now, I will see about getting some sleep. Oh, and an optimistic thank you for your hopefully helpful advice.