Status: problem went away, but I don't know what happened..
Tried latest release first, then older ones, but all same result. @jancsika : Funny that you should have me try provoke the symptom with a simpler patch, cause I can't. 
leading me to think its something patch specific, or something in that one patch that screws things up...
Its all working as it should now though...
I did delete all prefs, and add most of the paths again, but problem remained. It was only after trying to make some new simple patches to provoke the symptom as well as add one of the paths leading to some of the sub patches that the initial problem went away.
Could it be the lack of path that caused sliders to freeze?
...anyways, Im happy you are aware of the issue and are doing something about it. PD has always crashed on me from time to time and in different ways, so I assume I should never expect a perfect working PD, or a perfect working computer for that matter.
