I'd try running conversations through X-Terminal, seeing if there's any error messages popping up. Failing that I'd maybe check through with for instance cat on the /proc/<id>/fd/2 or even running it through GDB.

I am guessing kingoddball does have somewhat a valid point there in terms of usage, if its not usage then it could be your conversation history is too big to load.

I would also check other areas for log, maybe even dmesg to see if there's any issues with memory, etc.