My simplewallet (W-XP) also crashes when loading a pre-existing wallet. This happens whether running against my local node or remote node. Deleting the wallet's cache enables it to load, but in watch-only mode.
The message is:
Error: failed to load wallet: basic_string::resize
FWIW, here is the log:
2016-Aug-29 07:58:49.718750 Error: failed to load wallet: basic_string::resize 2016-Aug-29 07:58:49.718750 ERROR C:/msys32/DISTRIBUTION-BUILD/src/simplewallet/simplewallet.cpp:1006 failed to open account 2016-Aug-29 07:58:49.718750 ERROR C:/msys32/DISTRIBUTION-BUILD/src/simplewallet/simplewallet.cpp:2750 Failed to initialize wallet