hi scott!
sorry for my delayed reply. i live in spain... it's a different world! ;-)
your questions are the solution!... the question below went straight to the point:
** Are you 100% certain your image does not have some non-standard modifications in it which might be affecting things?
some time ago i tinkered with some files in order to turn off the "etoyFriendly" preference and set up others things following an article titled "SmallTalk development on XO" found in the OLPC wiki...
obviously i did something wrong. it's all my fault, so i've re-installed Etoys and everything works fine now.
thanks for your guidance!
angel.