As this strange error makes me a bit nervous I checked an older file for its behavior: same result! A file that without problems was typeset in April now ends up with the same kind of freezing: \usetypescriptfile[type-gyr] \usetypescript[times][ec] \mainlanguage[de] \enableregime[utf] \setupbodyfont[times,10pt] \setupinterlinespace[line=12pt] \starttext Wort und Tat in 1906 \stoptext When this is set with pdftext all is fine. With xetex (or xtx) the process stop at this line: (/usr/local/texlive/2007/../texmf-local/tex/context/base/type- gyr.tex))! unknown encoding "utf"; reading as raw bytes for 29 second (!) and ends up without producing the pdf: Output written on test_1.xdv (1 page, 1628 bytes). Transcript written on test_1.log. TeXExec | runtime: 30.596294 What went wrong? Help! Steffen