Bank Reconciliation: Processing please wait message...

SOLVED

My customer is using version 28.1.404.0 (Upgrade is planned).  Recently, and for the first time, when they clicked the "Save progress" button on the bank rec screen, the rec hangs with the "Processing please wait message..." for a very long time. They eventually did End task and tried to restart the bank rec process, but the saved rec had corruptions, duplicated transaction lines.

I followed the recovery tools and did re-index and compress all, and reset bank reconciliations. This allowed the rec to be opened from the previous saved progress, and there were no duplicated lines and the balance was correct.

However, if any action is then attempted, either save progress, or reconcile with just one added matched transaction, the "Processing please wait " message appears again, and never clears (half an hour waited, normally takes a couple of minutes)

I found a KB article that suggested this was a compatibility mode problem: the program was not set to compatibility mode, and I tried this on two different PC's and also direct on the server where the data is, same result: can't save progress or reconcile without hanging with the Processing please wait message.

There are plenty of resources, not an unusually large number of transactions in the rec. No previous problems with saving or reconciling.

Any ideas of what I can try next?