Whenever I attempt to run inkscape, I get a message stating that "Inkscape has encountered an internal error and is shutting down". I have uninstalled and re-downloaded the program, but continue to have the same problem. I am attmpting to run version 0.46, on a pc with windows xp sp2 (3?). Is anyone else having this issue? Any suggestions?

Maybe your preferences file is corrupted, I think it remains on your computer even if you uninstall Inkscape. Try uninstalling it and also delete the preferences.xml file, the install and see what happens.