I create new shortcut objects, after which I change them to show the icon associated with the shortcut.

Exactly how are you doing this? I've had DX crash on me upon applying a change to an object, using an image with an apparently incompatible format. It was a png file which I had saved from Corel Draw. I had forgotten to set to use a mask when exporting the image. Not sure if this is your problem or something else.

Well, since this is really my first project I decided for the most part to leave animations out. So I'm not using png files, at least for the shortcut objects. Instead I've gone through and extracted the ico files from the applications that I'm creating the shortcuts for. Then I just tell it to use the ico file. I figured these would be the easiest supported files to use. What really makes no since though is the fact that for the objects Ive already created, if I change anything like a label, it still crashes.