Comment 1 for bug 1280880

Could you please give your OS and Inkscape version? Some memory related crashes in 0.48.x are now fixed in the development version. The Inkscape website gives some links if you want to test it (see http://inkscape.org/en/download/).

> Is there a safe mode on Inkscape

No real safe mode. The next major version will allow users to control what to do with invalid style properties and invalid attributes in the SVG code, but it won't help you.

You can hand edit your file with a text editor and remove the image element if you think it is the cause of your crash. Just get rid of the <image /> element with all its attributes (probably a very big xlink:href!) and your document should be a bit lighter (and hopefully open correctly without crashing).