Well I fixed it. This is what happened.
After a few weird occurances (never ending license request being the most irritating) I decided that Novation's AutoMap had to go.
Good idea. But badly handled. While chucking out the plug-ins marked (automap) I managed to throw out a lot of useful plug-ins. (Oh dear! But not my fault- Novation had wrongly labelled them).
So I go back into PT8 and find stacks of plug-ins missing.
So I do the only sensible thing and un-install ProTools. Re-install ProTools. re-install the second upgrade. Then re-install all my plug-ins.
Then I chuck away any plug-in to do with VSL.
The I re-install the November VE. It works. Then I re-install the February VI. That works.
Then I get confident. Everything is opening like lightning. Even ProTools opens faster. (About 5 times faster so that's impressive)
So then I cross a bridge too far. I re-install the February VE. That's when everything goes back to square one. (At least as far as VE is concerned).
So i chuck away any VE plug-ins and re-install the November version (build 3388). And everything is once again perfect.
So. My advice is do a clean out. Get rid of the old VSL plug-ins and the associated folders that live in the Digidesign/plugins folder. Then re-install build 3388 of VE. (The latest VI doesn't seem to be a problem).
For good measure an un-install and a re-install of PT LE 8 may well help. It certainly helped me a great deal. (I did the total un-install not the recommended paetial un-install).
Good luck. It took me a day to work this out. I hope it works for everyone else.