This is a known issue, however it is not a common one. The symptoms are as you have indicated. "Upon creation of a new report file, you get a critical error: Cannot
read from {path}\qrddefs.dat" etc. You cannot even enter the designer.."

To get around this, create a new file and start a new report, but don't save it. Do not hit <Esc> to exit though, as this seems to cause the problem. The qrdxxxx file will be left with one record on the free list, and this seems to solve the problem.

R&D is working on this, but it is intermittent, so hard to track down specifically.

Thank you for reporting it.
Regards