Probably a known memory hog issue but here is how I solved it. Restarted computer and noticed that FTW.exe was still running and had to be forced closed even though nothing showed on screen that it was still operating in some fashion. This caused me to not be able to run FTW and open the file I was using. It said "file in use". After restarting, I cleaned up temp files on the C drive. Tons of of left behind garbage. Very sloppy program indeed.
After this, FTW 2012 opened fine so I could compact and continue working.